Liebster Award

On Saturday I was merrily working away on my OU chapter for the week when I got an email to say that I’d received a comment on my blog. The comment was from my friend Bob @ Nailey Ma Bob and included a mention that she’d nominated Click’s Clan for the Liebster Award.

This is an award for bloggers who have less than 200 followers and helps to highlight new blogs. I’ve been trying to find some new blogs to read for a while, I’m incredibly satisfied with the ones I already follow, but they tend to be written by people I know from other sites and I like to think that part of the reason I blog is to ‘meet’ people I don’t know. That’s part of the reason why I’ve signed up for the A To Z Challenge. The Liebster Award has rules which help to promote other blogs, so I’m definitely on board with that.

These rules are:

1. You must post 11 facts about yourself.
2. Answer the questions set by the blogger that nominated you.
3. Choose 11 blogs and link them in your post.
4. Come up with 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
5. Go to their blog and tell them you have nominated them.
6. No tags back!

So here goes…

11 Facts About Me1. I love to read aloud. Some books just sound better when you speak the words out loud, any time that I’m alone and I have a good book, I’ll read it to myself. I can’t wait to have kids because reading bedtime stories will make this so much easier for me.

2. We don’t have TV in the house; that’s actually a bit of a lie, we have a TV but we don’t have Sky/broadband/a phoneline/etc. to actually watch programmes while they’re on. My lovely in-laws let us access the internet when we visit and we record Bones on their Sky+ but when we moved in we said we’d wait to get all that stuff for ourselves because it wasn’t top of our list of priorities. We thought we’d just finish watching some TV series boxsets that we owned and then we’d get around to it. Well, it’s over a year and a half down the line and it seems like the longer we go without ‘live TV’ the less of a need we feel for it (and the more DVD/Blu-ray boxsets we seem to acquire)!

3. When I was twelve I travelled to America by myself to spend Christmas with my Uncle and his family in Atlanta. Travelling to America as an unaccompanied minor was the coolest thing ever; for the last twenty minutes of the flight I was bumped up to first class, then I was the first off the plane, escorted through all these little corridors and handed over to my family before the rest of the travellers had even disembarked. Coming home I was left on the plane until last and was seriously beginning to think I’d been forgotten until someone came and got me.

4. I love taking photos, they’re not always very good photos, but I enjoy it and I think I’m slowly getting to grips with my DSLR camera. I live in such a beautiful place that it’s a shame not to try and capture as much of it as I can.

5. I’ve delivered several lambs by myself. A couple of consecutive years I spent first two days and then a week on a farm during lambing season. I’ve always said I wanted a pet sheep and a family member arranged it for me. It was a fantastic experience – I showed up on the farm at about 6am on the first day and was delivering my first lamb within roughly twenty minutes.

6. After nearly three years of trying to start a family was diagnosed with endometriosis and learned that the only way I’d ever conceive would be through IVF. I went onto the waiting list last April and I have to wait until next April before we’ll be anywhere near the top of the list. We’re hoping to get the funds together to go private but, living on an island, we’re tied to the seasons as we couldn’t have treatment during the winter months when there’s the most disruption to the ferries which could mess up our appointments. I’m sure one way or another I’ll get to be a mum some day.

7. All of my pets prefer my husband. It all started back in 2008 when I got two male rats named Nero and Finn. Mr Click wasn’t too sure about handling these tiny little fluff balls because he’d never been around rats before and was scared of hurting them. They grew up to be big, confident, squishy ratboys and they won him over with his charms; of the two, Nero was his best friend. He’s like the Dr. Doolittle of rats because all of our subsequent rats have loved him over me. It’s not just rats either! I begged and begged for a dog when we got a place of our own. We adopted Tara, our lovely black labrador, and she would much rather cuddle him than me. Actually, that’s a lie, I’m her best friend if I’ve got a biscuit.

8. I have a huge phobia of talking on the phone. My job involves talking on the phone all day. For some reason this doesn’t particularly bother me, but the moment my mobile rings I panic.

9. I am a massive Tolkien fangirl. I first read The Hobbit at the age of six, though I didn’t get into The Lord of the Rings until I saw the first film (then I devoured the books). I have a massive collection of Tolkien books and other related doodads. One of my most treasured possessions is a very early copy of The Silmarillion which my Grampy gave me.

10. I’m very accident prone, in fact, this is the longest I’ve actually gone without seriously injuring myself or warranting a trip to the hospital (though I came close the other week when Tara stood on my eye). I’ve spent three weeks in plaster though not for a broken bone; I’ve broken a rib and a bone in my foot, neither of which needed/could be plastered. My person best injury was driving four and a half inches of wood into my leg whilst teaching a primary school maths lesson.

11. I dream of someday having a house with a room which I can use as a library, that said, recently we’ve been rearranging things in the house and I’ve roughly half of my book collection out on display in the living room. The other half is in the spare bedroom that we’re turning into a hobby and craft room, so all I need is a comfy chair up there and it’ll be almost like having two libraries.

Questions from Bob
1. What is your TV guilty pleasure?
I have a soft spot for old kids TV shows, in my defence, I think they can now be classed as ‘classics’. Among my collection I have all the episodes of The Clangers and Bagpuss, I’ve also got a Hairy McClary DVD, Stoppit and Tidyup as well as Button Moon. They’re great for when you’re feeling under the weather, but not the sort of thing you really want to own up to having spent your weekend watching.

2. Have you got a party trick?Not really a party trick but I can recite the whole of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening’ off by heart. I used to use it when I was in the drama group and we needed to keep talking to test our microphones. I learnt it in English when I was about 16 and it’s one of my favourite poems so it’s just sort of stuck with me.

3. What is your favourite item in your wardrobe?I’ve got a couple of lovely long cardigans. They’re lovely and comfortable and when I wear them I kind of feel like I’m wearing a Harry Potter-style wizard robe. I got the first with some gift vouchers we got when we were married, the second one Mr Click bought me (and I need to sew up because I’ve got a hole in one of the arms). They look nice and smart for work, or are comfy if I’m wanting to wear them with jeans as a sort of smart-casual.

I also like my big baggy hoodies and jumpers I’ve stolen borrowed from Mr Click. I’d wear them out if it was more socially acceptable, but mostly they’re just for lounging around the house in winter.

4. You’ve been given £/$100 and you have to spend it in an hour, what do you buy?Right now? I’d put it with the money I’ve already got put aside and toddle down to our local electrical shop to buy the chest freezer we’ve been saving up for. Any other time? I’d splurge on DVDs and books. Top of my DVD list right now is the ER boxset.

5. What is your favourite all time movie?Jack and Sarah. Richard E. Grant is a man whose wife dies in childbirth and he’s left to raise his daughter on his own, and then he acquires a rather unconventional nanny. It’s got Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in it and I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember, even though it makes me want to cry.

The Lord of the Rings films are a very close second but as they’re three films I don’t think they count.

6. What annoys you the most?Rude people.

There are ways to say things if you’re unhappy about something and there are ways not to say things. People who talk over others, put people down, say things behind people’s back, don’t listen, it’s all the same and it’s not nice.

7. Who would play you in a movie of your life?Ooh, tough question. I don’t really resemble anyone famous so I couldn’t pick that way. I asked Mr Click and he said Billie Piper or Honeysuckle Weeks, so yeah, I’d go along with that. They’d have to get my accent right though, I’ve got a terrible West Country twang, hehe.

8. What’s your favourite joke?After studying two OU linguistics courses I have a new respect for puns or anything involving a bit of wordplay. I like funny business names like ‘Lettuce Eat’ (a sandwich shop) and ‘Sherlock Homes’ (which I think was a rental agency).

I know one about an email which is sent to the wrong person, but it’s long and I always muddle it up.

9. Who is your role model?I’ve not really thought about who my role model would be, there are lots of people who I admire though. I think in terms of role models, J.K. Rowling is pretty much up there. She made it through really difficult times, worked hard and does so much good now. I think that I’d probably class her as a role model.

10. What is your favourite website?Probably HTV. I joined back when I used to watch Casualty because it’s a community for fans of the TV show, but there’s something about the place that just sucks you in. I’ve not watched Casualty in about two years but I still hang around HTV, mostly in the Chit Chat and Books forums. I’ve made so many friends on there and some day I will actually make it to a meet-up. I can’t even say exactly what it is about the place except that everyone is really nice and caring, and just slightly insane, which makes it a fun place to be.

11. Do you drive & if you do, what car do you drive?I don’t drive yet, someday. I’m hoping to start lessons again later this year, just as soon as I’ve got a new provisional license, my old one expires this year and I’ve never actually gotten around to getting my maiden name removed from it. Mr Click has a car which is ‘our car’, it’s a Renault and it’s nice and high and comfy (and I would love it even more if it was an automatic which I could happily drive). Since getting Tara it sports a dog guard, seat covers and a sort of seatbelty thing in the book for her, oh and we’ve recently had to get a new seatbelt for the back seat because she ate one. It’s a sort of silvery colour and sometimes it’s a bit slow going up hills. I’m really not a car person.

My Questions for my nominees1. How old were you when you first started using the internet?
2. What’s your favourite memory from school?
3. You can invite five people, living or dead, to a fantasy dinner party. Who do you invite?
4. If you weren’t doing your current job, what job would you be doing?
5. What is your favourite photo or picture? (If you can’t share it, describe it).
6. What is your favourite room in your house?
7. Why do you blog?
8. Who was your first crush on?
9. Do you still have your first teddy/stuffed toy?
10. Where in the world would you like to visit?
11. What is the worst book you’ve ever read?

My Nominees (all blogs I've recently found through the A To Z Challenge)
1. Oh Frog It!
2. My Baffling Brain
3. Reading, Writing and Everything In Between
4. My Creatively Random Life
5. Domestic Evolution