I am ‘chuffed to bits’ to be nominated for this award and extremely grateful to Joycelin Leahy, the author of Tribalmysticstories, for doing so. I have followed Joycelin for a few months now and am so glad I found her. Her amazing blog is the most versatile one I’ve seen on WordPress so far. Such a variety of posts! I particularly love her memoirs of her life as a child and young woman, growing up in Papua New Guinea. She did a wonderful post about the importance of varying the type of blog posts you present, entitled ‘The Diet of Content’. It’s really interesting and informative – and definitely worth the read. Thank you so much, Tribalmystic!
Joycelin nominated me for this award a few weeks ago now and I’m seriously guilty of prevaricating over my response. As with many of us, its a question of, ‘so much to do but so little time to do it in’! Now, I think I’m ready to
So here are the Versatile Bloggers Award rules:
- Show the award on your blog.
- Thank the person who nominated you.
- Share seven facts about yourself.
- Nominate 15 blogs.
- Link your nominee’s blogs & let them know. You can click on each one mentioned to get to their blogs.
Here are seven facts (in my case, they’ve turned out to be paragraphs) about myself:
- I’m not in the least bit photogenic. I seriously hate every photo of me ever taken and growing older has just added to my dislike of them – especially close-ups. One of my daughters is a keen photographer, who spends a lot of the time snapping anything in sight. I hate going for walks with her when she’s armed with her blessed camera! She took my photo for Amazon – and what a palaver that was! She took well over a hundred snaps just to get one that was remotely suitable. I don’t like it one bit, but it was all I had to use at the time. The problem (so she tells me) is that I ‘pull a face like an alien’ when I pose for a photograph. I don’t smile nicely, it seems. I grimace. I keep telling her to move further back, but does she listen . . . ? She takes awesome pictures of everything else, though.
- I was a fitness / exercise freak for years. I jogged, went to the gym and swimming pool, and walked everywhere whenever possible. When the children were little I moderated accordingly, going jogging or swimming once my husband got back from school (yes, another teacher). Nowadays I just rely on long walks and swimming a few times a week.
- I love physical geography / geomorphology. The study of landforms, river systems, tectonic and sedimentary processes and so on fascinates me. I taught it for years and enjoyed every minute of it. I also love geology, particularly the palaeontology side of it. I have a large rock and fossil specimen collection, all nicely labelled. My husband made a really big wooden box, with a hinged lid, for me to house them and it’s really quite impressive.
- Although I write historical fiction, I adore crime novels and read a lot of them. I’d like to have a go at writing one myself some time. It would probably have a historical setting, although in which period I’ve yet to decide. Perhaps a little later than the 9th Century, this time!
- I do (or rather, used to do) a lot knitting and have made dozens of sweaters and other items over the years. I know it sounds like a ‘granny’ thing to do (and I am a granny!) but I was knitting away happily even when I was a child. My grandma taught me, and when we had lessons in Junior School (if you’re snorting derision at that, I just want to add that it is the 1950’s I’m talking about!) I could probably knit as well as the teacher. I find knitting a very relaxing thing to do, although I haven’t done any for a couple of years now. My writing has to come first. But I do still get the urge to ‘create’ something on my knitting needles now and then.
- I love children. That might sound obvious in view of the fact that I’ve got six of them and was a teacher for umpteen years. Although I taught older students (11-18) I love little ones, and I adore babies. Yes, I’m soppy, I know. I tried primary teaching for two years once, but realised it wasn’t for me. I love my teaching subjects – always science and geography, with history most years as well – and loved the depths to which I could explore them with the older ones, particularly the GCSE and ‘A’ level students. I miss teaching a lot, sometimes. I have lots of happy memories, though.
- My husband and I, and our children, are great bird lovers. We live in a tiny village, surrounded by farmland and woods and our house is next to a farm, with barns and other outbuildings. We have so many different bird species coming into our garden, or the ‘bullock field’ at the back of it. I won’t list them all, but they range from tiny wrens, tits and finches to different species of owls and woodpeckers and a pair of sparrowhawks. The latter (not together) sometimes fly in to attack the hundreds of sparrows nesting in our back hedge. My particular favourites are the blackbirds. They are so territorial, just watching the antics of the most dominant ones has me in stitches. But even the pretty little male robins can be little brutes with each other! Of course, we encourage the garden birds to visit us with nut and seed feeders, and fat-balls hanging from every possible place. We’re well rewarded in the spring by being woken at 2.30 a.m. by the most amazing dawn chorus. So much for trying sleep . . .
These are the blogs I’m nominating for this award:
Note: Amongst them are a couple that have already had this award but who, I noticed, have responded to nominations for the same award more than once.
3. The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally
4. Tony A Smith
1o. Mariella Hunt
11. Kindness Blog
12. Scribbley14
Millie Thom 