Thanks John, who noticed I'm so good at FACTS he wanted 8 random ones. In spite of myself, I'm interested in seeing what I come up with.
1) My real first name is Jon. Jon Martin Collinson. It's such a fantastic 1960s name. I think my Dad wanted to call me Jon, my Mum, Martin. He never stood a chance.
2) I was never very interested in birds until I was 15, when we moved to Llandudno, North Wales. The story is told in highly embarassing fashion in Birdwatch 106 (April 2001) - 'Mergansers in the Mist'. I can't believe I wrote that crap. Here it is for you all to laugh. It's excruciating.
3) Although I'm a mild-mannered birdwatcher by day, as the result of a terrible laboratory accident on a school trip in 6th form (I was bitten by a radioactive scientist), at night I become a costumed crime-fighting superhero biologist. I save the World while you sleep, you lazy gits.
4) I got a first-class degree in Genetics from Cambridge. Hell, it was a double first. Bloody Hell, it was the *top first* and, do you know... NOBODY has ever asked... nobody has ever cared. I want recognition, goddamit! :-)
5) I watch wayyyyyy too much telly. I like Doctor Who, and 1970s/80s non-PC sitcoms constantly rerun on Sky etc channels. I aspire to be George from 'George and Mildred'. He seems to have a nice life. Also Carry On films, and Big Brother
6) Historical Figures I most identify with... really it's Thomas Huxley, but without the whiskers. I would really have liked to have been a scientist in the late 19th century - the days when you could still be interested in everything and keep up with the field.
7) My favourite food is Jelly Babies.
8) I have not had time to read a novel for 6 years, since Lizzie was born (Jan 2001). I'm currently reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 5 pages at a time, to Lizzie as a bedtime story. I think it's pretty shit, tbh. If anyone looked through my bookcases, they'd get the impression that I was interested in birds, Thomas Hardy, birds, evolution, birds, George Orwell, birds, other living things, birds, biographies, birds, and 20th Century history.
is that enough?
1 comment:
Awww, the magic of mergansers. Thanks for the foray into randomness. Funny that we started birding at approximately the same age. Adolescence seems to be a trigger - this will all be cleared up someday when the birding gene is finally isolated by a geneticist with too much time on his hands...
By the way, you have been proven right - not just about that bad video of something flying away, but the other thing..."one slows you down, the second stops you dead." Fortunately I've discovered we love our babies a lot, otherwise this parenthood stuff would be intolerable.
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