Inspiring Blog Award – Coming to a Blog Near You Today!

First of all, I must thank the lady at:

pregoandtheloon

for nominating my blog for an ‘Inspiring Blog Award’!

I’m glad I’m inspiring someone! 🙂 Made my day when I read she’d nominated me as one of her 7 most inspiring blogs. Her blog is pretty inspiring, being that of a woman who’s removed herself from domestic violence and is now writing about her experiences to help others – so make sure you have a read…

Now, the rules of the game mean I now have to nominate 7 other blogs for the award. To be honest, I don’t read all that many bloggers on a regular basis at the moment as I think I spend far too much time online – the ones I read also tend to be about going up mountains. But, I’ve tried to include a couple of other subjects, i.e. animal welfare/campaigning (which is very dear to my heart) and photography (which I’d like to be better at).

I also have to list 7 little-known (by some) facts about myself – I’ve had a little think and here goes:

1. I have partial heterochromia. Before you say how sorry you are to hear that, it’s a good thing. I always wanted to be different, even as a very small girl, and so nature granted me that – I have one eye which is plain blue/grey and the other is two-thirds brown and one-third blue/grey. I’m delighted about it and am always pleased when people notice. It runs in the female side of our family – my mother and grandmother are/were the same.

2. At 14 I was a raging alcoholic… well, possibly not that raging as, when I achieved my heart’s desire of getting paralytic (which wasn’t always affordable at that age), I was mostly unconscious! I didn’t realise at the time but, when I read my diary at the end of the year, and found I’d been drunk all year except for 7 days, including getting drunk down town in my school dinner-hours, I decided maybe I should make myself stop. ‘A Clockwork Orange’ had just hit the cinemas and us teens were regularly sneaking in to see it (pretending we were 18, like for the drinking). That film is famous for, apart from it’s violence, the concept of ‘avoidance therapy’. I decided to give it a go. I basically made myself either be sick or feel very sick every time I drank – as I positively hate being sick, this certainly put me off. In a short while, my brain made the connection and, for years, I couldn’t take a mouthful of alcohol without feeling very ill indeed. So, instant de-alcoholic-isation – great stuff! I still don’t drink and haven’t since then – not even when I did my 5 years in the Army. I acted dafter than those who were drunk anyway so everyone thought I was 😉

3. I’m naturally nocturnal. I haven’t made myself go like that, honest – even as a young child I refused to get out of bed at all until afternoon unless I was dragged. The sun, or bright light, sends me to sleep almost immediately – not good if I’m driving but then we don’t get that much sun here! My natural hours are to go to bed around 5 or 6 am and sleep until mid afternoon or tea-time. That’s why I work shifts – I’m bright as a button all night on nightshift but I’m almost an automaton on dayshift 😦

4. When I was a kid (pre-teens), I started an Animal Rescue Team with my brother and best friend. We pooled all our pocket money each week and bought dog/cat food and the like to feed any local strays. I still campaign for animals regularly now.

5. I’ve had a very sh*tty lovelife (apart from 2 nice guys in 30 years!) – don’t worry, I’m not bitter, I find some of it quite amusing now. But it does mean I’ve given up relationships to pursue more fun things – like getting going up big, scary hills – I’d been neglecting that a bit when I had boyfriends.

To give examples (but no names 😉 ), the one I was supposed to marry at 19 (we’d been seeing each other for nearly a year) was already married! His wife rang me out of the blue one day – she thought I knew about her! I caught the next one in bed with a colleague. I always said I’d batter the pair of them if I caught folks doing that to me but, strangely, I didn’t – I just sat on the floor next to the bed and asked dumb questions, thereby embarrassing them even further!

Another one, when he was a recent ex, accused me of stalking him and told all his and my colleagues – I’d phoned him several times one day as his family (he still lived with mum and dad – awwww) kept saying he was out and would be back soon. He rang me regularly so not sure why I wasn’t allowed to ring him? Now he wonders why I won’t answer his e-mails!

The funniest one was a Beduin guy in Jordan – when we fell out, as neither of us spoke much of each others’ languages, we proceeded to have a raging argument by phrasebook. That would have made a great video clip – one of us would snatch the book, furiously leaf through until we found the relevant complaint/insult and then pass it back jabbing the relevant phrase with our finger 😉

If you’re reading this guys (except the internet-less Beduin nomad of course), you know who you are! Fame at last 😛

6. I am visited periodically by ghosts – occasionally dead relatives but more often not. I’ve even had, in the past, an evil entity bothering me for months – I got the upper hand eventually but ended up very ill for 3 days! I can certainly sense where ‘entities’ are lurking (as can my mother – must be the eyes-thing 😉 )

7. I’m a total Luddite and seem to be at least 10 years behind on everything (except perhaps starting a blog). I have a 1976 Cortina, a 1976 Suzuki trail bike, a 1975 static caravan (which I lived in for 18 happy and cheap years), a 1955 pedal bike (was my Mum’s)… Oh yeah, and as many of you do know, I’m sticking to my film camera until I’m forced to go digital!

Now for my nominations – in no particular order:

Life in the Bogs
one of the best photographers I’ve seen…

Stravaiger John
A mix of pleasant walk reports and countryside campaigning. He’s also interested in gypsies and their lifestyle as am I…

John D Burns
John’s blog is always very amusing and, of course, he writes about Scottish hills, camping, bothying etc which I like to read about.

Alex & Bob’s Blue Sky Scotland
A blog with a bit of everything outdoors… sometimes climbing, sometimes cycling, sometimes mountaineering, sometimes urban and usually lots of humour. Great photos too…

Alex’s own blog Scotland’s Mountains
Mountaineering/hillwalking posts with more good photos and humour

Paul Shorrock’s Mountain Blog
A varied blog with a weekly post about mountains in Britain and elsewhere – always a good read. A bonus is the superb sub-title ‘One Pillocks Hillocks’ – a skit on Tom Patey’s ‘One Man’s Mountains’ title and a very amusing one at that.

And last, but not least, an animal welfare campaigning blog:
World News for Life
A very valuable resource of information and campaigns to join in with…

For sitting through all that, here’s a pic of me in my ‘gypsy days’ outside my beloved caravan 🙂