Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Pam's Prizewinning Surprises

Have I told you recently that I am the recipient of Blog Buddies? Sarah Mac, my champion passed it on to me and there are a few criteria. The first is to post 10 things that people don't know about you and so, here is Part 1 of the Blog Buddies challenge.
Ten surprising things about Pam
1.     I can juggle. I juggle really quite well with 3 balls (titter ye not, missus).
Well actually, I can manage 3 of anything really quite well with all the usual tricks and flicks. I used to travel within Spain quite a lot and it was my busking thing for food money. It also helped me to make friends J I can juggle in an inconsistent manner with clubs and have a variety of other circus skills under my belt –low level stilts, that sort of thing. I never mastered the unicycle though.

2.     Last year I sung backing vocals in an imploding reggae band, brief but fun. I am determined to get back into a band this year. I am such a music lover that I cannot settle on a genre. Maybe an opportunity will present itself and make up my mind for me. I used to sing a lot when I was younger. During the unhappy years, I did forget that I knew how to play guitar and that I had been a writer of songs. The moment I remembered, I bought Gloria (I expect this will all become clearer in a post one day)my beautiful black, sleek and curvy guitar.

3.     I touched Michael Franti of Spearhead once. Truly I did. It was at the best gig ever on the Indoor Stage at Leicester Summer Sundae. He is so charismatic! Hear his protest music with fantastic beats, here.  Two years ago I went on my first ever (and sadly my only) trip to San Francisco and was invited to a party where I was introduced to the wife of the ex-bassist of Spearhead. !!!!!!!!!! I mean !!!!!!!!! It truly is a tiny world. I reckon if I try hard enough, I could find someone who’d let me roll a fag for Johnny Depp.

4.     Me and my mate Dave have had a ‘will we, won’t we?’ thing going for nearly 30 years.  We haven’t.

5.     I used to run a ‘hand-painted T-shirt’ business in my early 20’s with a grant from The Prince’s Trust. I earned enough money for my first ever inter-railing experience! I t was very time consuming though, hand-painting T-shirts. Strangely, I was never so successful on paper!

6.     I was on Australia TV once. Yes, I had had a crash in a car I was hitching from Adelaide to Sydney in –well 2 car crashes actually- and the lad-who-was-driving’s mum felt so guilty that she took me in and she had a daughter who phoned into a Saturday morning TV music show and got tickets and took me! John Oates was on and I was absolutely in love with him at the time cos I thought he looked like Charles II, who I had a historical crush on after reading stuff like ‘Forever Amber’. I asked him to sign my T-shirt and was so nervous that I got a nerve trapped in my leg and shook like a dog dry humping the hoover. He laughed and cuddled me and instead of cuddling back, I wasted the moment worrying about whether or not I had B.O.

7.     I am useless with pets, and too ashamed and depressed to explain that one.


8.     One of my all-time favourite memories is of a caravan weekend in Aviemore with my mates. One was on top of the caravan singing, Joolz and Ian were shaking the caravan next door as they were new lovers(who could have known that their 25th wedding anniversary would only be a breath away) and a pitiful voice replied to the question ‘Where’s Moose?’ with ‘I’m in the brambles and I’m not coming oot!'


9.     I used to be the town English teacher to a small Extremaduran town. The town mayor took me everywhere like a trophy as I was the first foreigner ever to go there. Since he was political, this is how I met Felipe Gonzalez who was a bit gorg-uss in his day and because I was young and stupid, that’s what I took from the moment.


10.                         When there was a fire on the Carcassonne /Figueres train, I was offered a lift by a couple who also offered a lift to a man who took us to his farmhouse and showed us his bread oven, but more importantly, his paintings, because he had been a student of Picasso! I must look out the postcard he gave me of one of his paintings –he might be famous! Will keep you posted! For my part, I have  a Blue Peter badge for a postcard competition. My entry depicted myself and my brother playing on the beach. I could see it from my bedroom window so had a no fair
advantage. If you flash your badge now, does it still get you in places for free?

3 comments:

  1. See, THAT'S the kind of stuff I want to have to share!!!

    I'm going to have to dig deep to think of a few more intesesting things about me!

    'bread oven? .... snort ..I take it that's NOT a euphamism???'

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  2. I had the impression he'd have been more than happy to show me his euphemistic bread oven too given 'alf a chance!

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  3. Hey Lesley - I've been sitting here for the last couple of days thinking how it would be so good to be able to be in touch on a better level than just leaving comments but as neither of us have email links or FB pages attached to our blogs I couldn't think how.

    Well, genius that I am ;) I decided that if I left a message on an older post of yours then it was probably safe to leave my email address and you could delete the comment after, so, here it is:

    macfarlane.sarah@googlemail.com - I don't know if you are on FB but if you are you can find me there too.

    Would love to be in touch more and arrange to meet up sometime - that offer of a weekend by the sea is ALWAYS open! xx

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