In the past I have always avoided being tagged by various blogging memes. However, it would seem my head is just slightly too far above the parapet for Will and so I find myself tagged with the ‘5 things you don’t know about me’ meme.

To be honest, when it comes to working out what you might not know about me, not only does it matter how long you’ve known me, but at what point you knew me best. Even people who have known me a long time will not know about large swathes of my life, because I have had several distinct periods in my life that don’t quite join up easily. If I ever get married, my stag do is going to be weird.

So, here goes, these are the top five “I bet you don’t know at least four of these, however you know me” items on my list.

1. As a young child, I was haunted by a family. Yeah, I’d laugh like you are right now too if somebody had just told me that. I can remember some of the conversations with reasonable clarity, and I even know why they were hanging out with me - a reason incomprehensible to a 4-year old, but seems perfectly sensible to me now, if you’re willing to take a certain view of the World (which I have serious problems with). I also remember the last conversation I had with them where they told me they weren’t coming back and I had to get on with my life. Then they were gone and I never saw them again. Yes, I know, I don’t believe in ghosts either. I’m just telling you what I remember.

2. When asked what I would have done for a living if computers didn’t exist, nearly everybody in my family would answer ‘doctor’ or ‘lawyer’ because I have a pretty analytical mind, and I expressed interest in both careers when young. However, when I was making decisions about these things as a teenager, for me the choice was nothing like that. It was either to make a career in IT, or to attempt to gain a commission as an officer in the armed forces. The main factor pushing me into IT was because I was so overweight at the time, I would never have passed a medical.

3. My father is a naturalised US citizen. He was born in Stockport (as I was), but after splitting with my Mother married Sheilagh and moved to the Bay Area (with my two step-brothers and step-sister) to program AS/400s in a little-known language called Synon. When I visited California as a teenager, I spent time in his office reading AS/400 manuals, and have a soft spot for IBM kit as a result. I also have a soft spot for the San Francisco 49ers and the SF Giants, even though my Dad now lives several hundred miles South of SF in Orange County. I nearly always watch American sports on five unless I have a meeting the next morning.

4. Christie O’Connor Junior - the relatively famous golfer - is my Mother’s cousin. I only recall meeting him once as a very small child, but met his father Arnold (my Great-Uncle) on several occasions before his death some years ago. The last time I saw a picture of Christie that I hadn’t sought out to say to somebody “yeah, he’s the famous one in our family”, it was by chance as I noticed him on the front page of The Times a few years back. He was playing golf with Bill Clinton.

5. Although I’ve managed to get rid of the the most problematic ones, I still have a whole bunch of Asperger Syndrome style behaviours. It’s self-diagnosed and as a syndrome there is no real science to it so it’s true that it could all be in my head. When somebody pointed out maybe I should look into AS, I realised that the weird obsessive-compulsive “looping” behaviour I sometimes had could be used against itself to train myself out of those behaviours if I wanted. You’ll have to work out for yourself what remains, but the most obvious remaining external behaviour is that it is unlikely you’ll have ever seen me with my shirt sleeves rolled down, and I flinch and feel nauseous around velcro. Oh, and look at what I do with my watch when I’m slightly nervous. Yeah, I know, mental, etc., etc.

Who to tag? Well, that’s a tough one, as few of my friends seem to have blogs. Either that, or they really wouldn’t appreciate a bunch of coders and developers pouring over their blog.

I will therefore choose a mixture of people. I will choose Andy Stothard because in the last week gave me a timely present for no reason other than because he’s a good mate. I’ll tag William Tozier because he was kind enough to cheer on my utter madness in recent blog posts here, and I had an interesting conversation with him via e-mail. I’ll tag Austin Kleon because I found his blog quite recently, and his work makes me smile. And for my last two I’ll tag people who don’t have blogs, but should know better, get their fingers out of their arses and get on with it. Carl Drinkwater, Andy Threlfall, consider yourselves chastised.

UPDATE - It seems one of the things I didn’t know about Carl Drinkwater was that he actually does have a blog. Serves me right for not doing my research properly. Again.