Liebster Blog Award

A gracious thank you to mairedubhtx at My Life, Such As It Is for awarding me the Liebster Blog Award! It’s a great honour. Thank you for reading (and hopefully enjoying) my blog!

Please check out her blog. She writes on a huge wealth of topics and is always interesting and thought provoking. So here are the rules, as copied and pasted via mairedubhtx:

1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves.

2. Answer the questions that the tagger set for you plus create 11 questions for the people you’ve tagged to answer.
3. Choose 11 people and link them in your post.
4. Go to their page and tell them.
5. No tag backs!

 

Here are the 11 things about me:

1.       I am a married mother of two nearly grown up children and I live at home with them in Manchester, England.
2.      I am a Christian and am an active church member in my community.
3.      I am the conductor of Todmorden Community Band.
4.      My favourite comedian is Billy Connolly.
5.      My biggest physical achievement was cycling from Coast to Coast in the UK with my husband in the summer of 2009.
6.      I am a musician and have played a musical instrument since the age of 7.
7.      As well as playing the cornet I can also play the digeridoo.
8.     I am an avid reader and am very rarely more than a few feet away from a book.
9.      My Kindle Fire HD has got to be the best present I have EVER been given!
10.  I have committed myself to the DailyChallenge 2013 and have pledged to produce a blog post each day this year.
11.   I have recently launched an online business selling hand-made crafts that have been made by myself, my husband and my Mum.

Step Two. Answering the 11 questions mairedubhtx posed to me:

1.      What is your favourite blog post that you have written? My most successful post in terms of visitors and views was one I did about Freddie Mercury. On one day I had over 6,500 visitors which was astounding!! The most I’d had before then (or since, if I’m honest) is around 100. I can’t take much credit for writing much in that post because it was just a series of photographs telling his life story, with only few words from me. The one I enjoyed compiling the most was one where I did a “word cycle”. I have promised myself I’ll do another one soon. This question has just given me a little prompt to do just that!

2.     What is your most embarrassing moment? I used to work in a music shop and one day we were hosting a mid-day concert on the piano floor for around 200 guests. The concert was to be performed by members of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and it was a highly prestigious event. I was on the floor team, which meant we were the public face of the shop and part of our job was to waitress for the guests. We had previously moved nearly 100 pianos to make room for the staging platform and the seating area for the audience and by the time we had started the concert we were pretty knackered to say the least. The embarrassing moment came when just as the singers were about to start their opening number I realised I was hemmed into the corner by the side of the stage (only about 6 inches off the floor….) and I should have been at the back where I could get to the drinks for the guests. I tried to delicately remove myself from between the stage and the grand piano in the corner, but due to the fact I was in front of 200 audience members and around 15 of the country’s most eminent Gilbert and Sullivan expert singers, my feet suddenly seemed to be totally disconnected to the rest of my body and I tripped over the corner of the stage. I went SPLAT on the floor. Full length on the wooden floor in front of all of those people, I was totally mortified. I shot to my feet and tried to make my escape before anyone noticed….as if….. and in my haste I completed my humiliation by running straight into the corner of another piano and smashed my hip on it. I rebounded with a thud into a piano next to it, knocking the breath out of me which to be honest wasn’t really there to begin with after my spectacular fall moments earlier, and I limped out of the room with face on fire and pride extremely battered and bruised. The audience were very sympathetic. I received a round of applause as I made my exit down the stairs…..

3.     When have you been the happiest? I am at my happiest when I am in the company of my family. Whether that is in the car on the way to visit relatives, or in the living room on a Saturday night watching TV, or in the caravan on holiday, I am at my happiest when I’m chillin’ with ma homies.

4.     Do you have any piercings? Where are they? Have you let any close up? I have my ears pierced once each. I don’t tend to wear earrings but it’s easy enough for them to go through the hole if I’ve left it for a while.

5.     What is your favourite non-healthy snack food? There’s a product we used to get from Costco called “Poppycock” which was totally addictive. I say “used to” get it because I made myself sick on it because it was so delicious! It is basically a mixture of almonds, popcorn, pecan nuts and toffee and is probably about 5000 calories per handful. It is gorgeous though and I’m salivating at the thought of it now!

6.     What cause or movement do you feel the most passionate about? Or do you not feel passionate about any particular thing? This is a great question because I know the motivation behind it and am in wholehearted agreement with it. I can’t say that I am really that passionate about any cause or movement. However, my impotent passion is about the current welfare reforms that our government is screwing us down with.

7.     Were you bullied in school or were you the bully or neither? I was bullied in school quite a bit because I wore glasses and later because I was in the band. I was a true child of the “enlightened” 70s!

8.    Are you in touch with your friends from primary school, middle school, or high school? Or have you lost contact with them? Would you like to find them again? Thanks to Facebook I have re-established some friendships with school friends and I’m very glad to have done so. My friends were roughly the same group of girls from primary school right through secondary school. There are some friends I made in college that I’d like to get in contact with again but I can’t see that happening any time soon.

9.     Do you have any religious or philosophical beliefs that guide you in life? I certainly do!! I am a Christian and whilst I sometimes struggle with the dogma of the religion I try to live my life in accordance with the philosophical values it presents.

10.What do you hope to achieve through your blogging? When I began blogging two years ago it was something that was entirely for my own benefit, something I could commit to that would give me a sense of achievement when I was at a very low spot in my life. Nowadays it is something that I enjoy as a way of sharing ideas and comments with people all over the world. I haven’t got a specific achievement in mind at the minute but I would like to manage the DailyChallenge 2013 this year.

11.  If you could travel to any place in the world, where would you go? I would love to go to Norway or Canada, preferably the north of both. I would love to see the Northern Lights in either of those places.

 

Here are my 11 questions for my 11 nominees who are listed below:

1. Do you live in the town where you grew up? If not, how far away are you from it now?
2. What do you do last thing before you settle down to sleep each night?
3. Do you prefer a laptop or a PC?
4. Are you an iPerson, or are you a Microsoft person? (See what I did there?!)
5. What is your most expensive indulgence?
6. Do you have a guilty pleasure?
7. What is your earliest memory of reading? Which book was your first independent read as a child?
8. Given a choice of bacon and eggs or cereal for breakfast, which would you have?
9. Which is your favourite holiday or festival?
10. Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? How would you define spirituality?
11. If you had five minutes to speak to anyone on earth, who would you choose to speak to and what would you say to them?

And now for the nominees:

Lady Barefoot Baroness

Maxi’s Comments

KittyHere or There, or Anywhere

Simple Pleasures

Aunty Uta

Joyce From This Side Of The Pond

Dave’s (almost) Daily Drivel

Reflections By Kathy

Stuff I Tell My Sister

DackelPrincess

Diabetic Redemption