The Kreativ Blogger and Versatile Blogger awards

Last night I got a lovely little surprise in one of my comments – I had been nominated for The Kreativ Blogger and The Versatile Blogger awards. It is completely flattering and unexpected, and frankly it means the world to me to know that other bloggers enjoy what I have to say – it certainly motivates me to keep on blogging! Read on for the details, and some random trivia about me.

I was nominated by the lovely Roshni from Roshrulez’s Weblog – an awesome blog full of thought provoking ideas that I think you should all take the time to check out! Thank you Roshni, it means a lot, and congratulations on being nominated yourself, of course! 

So, there are rules with these two awards, which have seemingly become blurred into one set of rules over time, which is fine by me. Basically, I need to tell all of you ten random (and hopefully unknown for most of you) facts about myself, and then nominate some fellow bloggers for the awards, who then go on and do the same.

Without further ado, 10 random facts about me:

1. I have epilepsy. I was diagnosed when I was 17 (despite suffering from it unknowingly for years), and when I had my big seizure which led to the diagnosis, I collapsed in my bathroom, hitting the ground with such force I kicked the tiles off the bathroom wall, and caused all the blood vessels in my face to burst, covering me in thousands of tiny little red dots. When I saw myself in the mirror later that day in the hospital, I burst into laughter.
2. I had to learn to speak twice. When I was 2 years old, I had fits which nearly killed me, and also nearly gave me brain damage (yes, yes, go on, make the “or did they…?” jokes…I just did myself). I recovered almost perfectly, except bizarrely I had forgotten how to talk, and had to start from scratch, which resulted in several lisps that took me several years to lose. Now of course I speak confidently and probably too much.
3. My favourite piece of classical music is the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. I find it amazing that a single piano can be just as powerful as his most heavily orchestrated symphonies.
4. I once laughed so hard while watching Monty Python that I actually lost my voice. I was babysitting for a family friend, and decided to watch the first Monty Python film, And Now For Something Completely Different for the first time in my life. I had previously only seen the other movies, and not a drop of the television series (which I have since watched multiple times), and so I was roaring with laughter at this film. Ten minutes into it, I went to talk to the kids I was babysitting, but nothing came out of my mouth when I tried to talk. Which in itself was quite funny, I suppose.
5. I have never broken a bone, despite my clumsiness. However, when I was about 13 years old, I injured my middle finger on my left hand falling backwards onto it while playing basketball. It resulted in that finger swelling up to twice its normal size, and changing colour, and I couldn’t bend it properly for a couple of years. But to a 13 year old boy, not being able to pull down my middle finger was kind of funny, and I used it to my advantage. “But I was just waving hello…”
6. The first story I remember writing was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. It was 20 pages long, took me most of the school year to write, and was mostly about robots and outer space, ending not with someone waking from a dream, but with the universe coming to an abrupt end. My lovely teacher “published” it for me, typing it up and binding it together. This probably decided my fate as a writer (and perhaps a teacher) there and then.
7. I like the taste of absinthe. I know it sounds odd, but I think it tastes okay, really. But people always think I’m really weird for this one.
8. I like rain. I think Billy Connolly said it best when he said “There’s no such thing as bad weather, it’s just a matter of being appropriately dressed.”
9. I spent the first 4 and a half years of my life living in England, mostly in Ipswich, Suffolk. I have spent the last 21 and a bit years living in Australia, on the Central Coast an hour north of Sydney. I feel just as English as I do Australian though, even after all these years.
10. I can raise my left eyebrow, and both eyebrows at the same time, but not my right eyebrow on its own. What is that about?

Now, I would like to nominate the following blogs for these awards as well (this was really hard to pick, so even if you didn’t make this list, I probably still love your blog):

• Gotmybook
• Notes From A Little Mouse
• Fix It, Dear Henry
• Storyteller In The Digital Age
• Books & Bowel Movements
• Poetrybytheclueless
• Eternal Domnation
• The BookBimbo Chronicles

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the random facts about me, and hope you all check out these awesome blogs I have listed, all of which amaze me in different ways.