7 things you probably didn’t need to know about me

As I’m going through a memetic phase, Julia tagged me with a 7 things meme last week (Update: through the magic of post scheduling, Bob also tagged me after I wrote this but before it appeared) . Here goes:


  1. Despite being a fan of hills and mountains, I always manage to end up living in places which can only be describe as ‘topographically challenged’:East Anglia, Southampton, and now Johannesburg, which is parked smack in the middle of the Highveld (although admittedly, having to drive downhill to get to the mountains is a bit of a novelty).

  2. I did at one stage flirt with the idea at taking A-levels in English, History, Latin and Greek rather than Sciences and Maths – partly encouraged by teachers who were seemingly horrified by the idea that I might become a scientist out of choice rather than necessity (i.e. you were no good at humanities). Needless to say, I have no regrets, but I do sometimes wonder where that path would have taken me.

  3. Despite having held a UK driver’s license for 12 years, I have done far more driving in New Zealand and now South Africa than I have in the mother country.

  4. My family has provided me with a lovely control experiment in the (non-)efficacy of astrology: my birthday is the day after my older brother’s. I love science, he hates it. I’m pretty indifferent to religion, he’s ordained in the church of England. I love travelling, he’s left the UK once on a day-trip to Belgium. He considers reading thrillers by John Grisham relaxation, I consider it to be torture. Case closed.

  5. I can speak French and Spanish, but I wouldn’t claim great conversational powers in either, especially since I have a habit of mixing the two together into a strange hybrid. Last time I was in France, I was asked a couple of times if I was from Spain – given my complexion, quite an achievment in mistaken identity.

  6. I have had the questionable honour of appearing in The Sun. On page 5, to be precise.

  7. Cumulative equipment losses on geology field trips: 1 Mahindra, 1 hammer, 2 compass-clinometers, too many pens and pencils to count.


I now tag sciencewoman, Alessia, Kim, Brian, John, Katie, and Saxifraga. Any readers wanting to divest of dark secrets may also do so below.

Categories: bloggery

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