Nothing but the truth

Jean Henry Mead, writer of the excellent Escape and the Logan and Cafferty series, creator of and contributor to several blogs, has written to say she’s given my blog the Honest Scrap Award.

My first reaction was to suspect that the ‘S’ at the beginning of the second word was a typo but apparently it’s an award for blogs which share honest bits of information about their writers. I assume that Jean was thinking of all the things I’ve said to convince readers that I’m possibly the nicest person in the universe. And there’s the rub – because the conditions of accepting the award are as follows:

1. You have to present the award to 7 other bloggers. (Well, that’s easy enough – the only problem is choosing from a longish list of possibles.)

2. You have to make a list of ten HONEST things about yourself. (Hmmm.)

I therefore have a choice. I can either stay as I am – awardless – or tell the truth about myself and lose all credibility. Unless I can come up with a stratagem. So while I’m pondering that, let me identify the seven others (in no particular order):

1. Michael Malone’s May Contain Nuts.

2. Gary Corby’s A dead man fell from the sky.

3. Scary Azeri's Scary Azeri

4. Marley Delarose’s Love knows no boundaries

5. Linda Faulkner's Linda Faulkner … on writing

6. Kari Lynn Dell’s Montana for Real

7. Sandie Dent’s Sandie Dent

All very entertaining, enlightening, funny and varied.

As for the 10 honest things, my strategy is to make them the sort of ‘confessions’ that are so boring that no one will get beyond the 3rd or 4th. So:

1. I’m wearing black moleskin trousers and a sort of corrugated cream shirt.

2. My inner self is 50 (and sometimes 60) years younger than the outer one.

3. I take a bike ride before breakfast most days (and am often overtaken by a tall, loping jogger).

4. I sometimes read thought-provoking or ‘intellectual’ books because I think they’re going to be good for me. (I’m usually wrong but even when I’m right, I forget what was in them very quickly.)

5. I have a daughter who reads the same books because she actually enjoys them.

6. I would love to understand the ‘truths’ of mathematics. I’ve tried many times but never succeeded.

7. I’m inordinately proud of my 2 brothers and 3 sisters and, if you spent any time with one or all of them, you’d see why.

8. I thank my car after any particularly long journey. Just a wee pat on the bonnet and a ‘Thank you, car’. (Come to think of it, this fits with my previous blog about ascribing feelings etc. to inanimate objects.)

9. When I scratch myself, I do it relatively discreetly.

10. And I realize that, despite all my worst intentions, I’ve actually been honest and all these statements are true so I’m obviously losing my grip on deceit.

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