1. When I was a baby, my father dropped me on my head. My parents divorced four years later.
2. A thick, heavy wooden door fell on my head in 1992. I split up with my girlfriend four years later.
3. I like all forms of music, except heavy metal. Something about head-banging…
4. I often wake up with an original song in my head. The lyrics are frequently unrepeatable and obscene. Even though I replace them I never forget them. Sometimes I don’t replace them. One day I will gig these songs, and then, mwuahahaaah!!!
5. I find tests of all kinds boring, the accompanying pressure completely pointless, and consequently despite my demonstrably huge and articulate intelligence, I loathe and detest Sudoku and have an IQ score lower than a marmoset. Read books, people, read books!
6. I still love all the people I ever loved, even if they turned out to be wrong ‘uns.
7. Sometimes on a sunny day, I close my eyes and turn my face to the sun, so that I can say hello to the orange worms. I call them Michael and Mathilde. I think everyone has orange worms like me, but very few people are prepared to admit it.
8. I’m not paranoid but that doesn’t mean they aren’t after me. I think that Facebook is run for and by the CIA (see http://albumoftheday.com/facebook/ )
9. I wish I was genuinely mad sometimes, occasionally yearning for the apparent freedom of the truly insane. And yet, I meditate which definitely increases my mental stability. Crazy!
10. When I left college, to chill out, I read the entire œuvre of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
11. I am an optimist. Humans will come together to save themselves and much of the world we inhabit. (Read: Ten Technologies to Save the Planet by Chris Goodall http://bit.ly/A5sn )
12. When I have been completely stuck in life, I have prayed, and it has worked. Yeah, yeah, say the secular rationalists, it’s psychology, the need for validation, confirmation bias, etc. God may be a convenient shorthand, or even as Buddha said, simply wrong thinking; but there’s nothing wrong with brevity and I’m still open to questioning. I’m not talking belief in invisible men in the clouds, or following any organised religion. But, I’m not an atheist.
13. It’s Friday the 13th as I write this. I’m not superstitious. 13 is a good number, a number of completion.
14. In relationships, I’m trustworthy, loyal and kind. When I was 14 my girlfriend asked me for sex in the woods, and I turned her down because we were *too young*. Still, she promptly went off with one of my best mates who was well up for it and had no such moral inhibitions. I don’t remember feeling bad at all, more relieved. When her Dad beat her up and gave her a black eye six months later, she called me up out of the blue. Of course, I went and got her from the place where she had run away and walked her back home. Didn’t think anything of it, in fact, forgot it for years.
15. I recovered a lot of memories when I went through therapy a decade ago. It was remarkable discovering how my reality had been shaped by the wishes of others to cover up their failings. Parents: don’t do it!
16. I am very rarely envious or jealous of others, and so I don’t see it in others. Envy me? Why? It’s a blind spot.
17. I lost my virginity at age 17 and 7 days, within ten feet of most of my family.
18. The thing that outrages me more than anything else is the unfair treatment and exploitation of the vulnerable.
19. I like buying clothes, dressing up, and going shopping. I had to put my foot down with a firm hand and stop buying shoes. I still have too many pairs.
20. I have a love-hate relationship with London.
21. As a child used to climb secretly to the top of buildings via the fire escapes and stand on the edge of the flat roofs, looking at the tiny ant people and toy cars below, or looking out across London from the heights of Crystal Palace hill.
22. I strive be less of a perfectionist and more of a messy percussionist.
23. Despite my apparent confidence, I am in fact seriously modest about my supposed attainments and consider them to be minor bordering on insubstantial. It’s only recently I have learned to see the value of what I am, and boast successfully about my achievements - huzzah for the internet!
24. I was never an alcoholic but stopping drinking was one of the best decisions I ever made.
25. One of my biggest strengths is my ability to spot an opportunity and improvise.
26. I don’t think rules necessarily apply to me, and I often advise other people to disregard them.