Five Things Tag

I was tagged by Look At This... yesterday and it's taken me a while to answer some of these questions. Why couldn't he have asked me my five favourite films? But then I only have three. Kes, Withnail And I and The Blues Brothers, incidentally.

What were you doing ten years ago?

Not much. Not long before I'd been self employed for a fair few years doing marketing and advertising etc, when I was ripped off for a horrendous amount of money. I then spent another horrendous amount of money with lawyers trying to get the money I was owed to no avail. Waste of time. Too many freemasons involved.

Anyway, a lady friend I had at the time was manageress of an Oxfam charity shop so I helped out there quite a bit. That was an eye-opener. I couldn't believe the amount of shoplifting that went on. I bet there would've been less if it had been public knowledge that three of the guys that regulary worked behind the till were convicted murderers nearing the end of their sentences and out on day release from prison.

I kid you not. One of the guys was 32 and had been in prison for 14 years. He'd come out of a pub one night and had seen an acquaintance being beaten up by another guy, so he ran across, pulled the other guy off and impaled his head on a spiked railing. Strangely he had a five year-old son from a relationship he had had with a prison librarian.

Another guy was a jeweller who'd poisoned his wife.

What were you doing one year ago?

Going up the wall. Three years previously I'd sold my big victorian terraced house and bought a tiny semi-detached house in a semi-rural location with sheep and horses and rolling countryside at the bottom of the garden. Big mistake. I'd been lied to about the neighbours. Them, two beligerent teenage children, eight dogs, a dog grooming business in a shed in the garden. The noise started at 6am every morning and went on until 1am the next day. Seven days a week. 52 weeks a year.

It wore me down. Made me ill in the end. It also ruined a relationship I'd had with a lovely Irish lady who couldn't cope with the fact that I was struggling to cope.

That's when I started this blogging malarkey.

Anyway, I managed to sell the house at the end of last year, (despite the neighbours), and am now living peacefully in suburbia.

Five snacks you enjoy:

Midget gems

Peanuts

Plain chocolate biscuits

Vegetable samosas

Spicy chicken wings

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:

How to choose? This was the easy question.

Nick Drake - Northern Sky

Dennis Brown/ Prince Mohammed - Money In My Pocket/Cool Runnings

The Clash - Guns Of Brixton

Graham Parker - You Can't Be Too Strong

Joe Jackson - A Slow Song

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

Make sure my mother was financially sorted so she could afford to do whatever she wished.

Buy a converted rice boat in the Backwaters of Kerala in India and chill.

Whilst in India I'd also go back to Madras, now named Chennai, and track down a few people I'd met whilst travelling years ago and hopefully make their lives a bit easier.

Get a car that is less than twenty years old.

Buy back the house I sold at the end of last year and install the most odious tenants I could find free of charge, on the proviso that they terrorised the neighbours and make their life a misery like those bastards did to me.

Five things you like doing:

Farting around on the interweb

Photoshoppery

Listening to music

Digressing

Being Lazy

Five things you would never wear again:

Oh God. In no particular order.

Clogs

Blue suede winklepickers

Tanks tops

Oxford bags

White leather jacket (got me dubbed the ice cream salesman)

Five favourite toys:

Computer

Car jump starter

Wacky digital TV/video box with two tuners

Kettle that changes colour

Old wind-up 78rpm gramophone with a big horn

You're it!

Armin

Miss Cellania

Exploding Aardvark

Chandira

Debbie

I was going to tag Tennessee Jed but it seems I'm a few weeks too late.

Anyway that's enough real life for now.