The Liebster Award!

Thank you so much to lovely Debs at Debs Daydreams in the Potting Shed for the Liebster Award.

The rules of the Liebster Award are:

Thank your Liebster Blog Award nominator on your blog and link back to the blogger who presented this award to you;

Answer the eleven questions from the nominator;

List eleven random facts about yourself:

Present the Liebster Blog Award to up to eleven other blogs that you feel deserve to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen;

Pass on the eleven questions to your nominees, or create new ones;

Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.

1. What’s your favourite novel and what do you love about it?

I can’t choose just one, but I will read and reread books by Stephen King, Anne Tyler, Deric Longden, Bill Bryson and Colin Cotterill.

2. Do you have any pet peeves in fiction?

I’m probably guilty of this myself, but too many speech tags with ly in them. He said heartily, she said slowly, he said passionately, she said blithely. I don’t mind a few, but too many are distracting. I once tried to read a book which had them for every single bit of dialogue - and there was a lot of dialogue. It is the one time I have literally thrown a book in frustration.

3. What are you most proud of?

My children. They’ve all turned out pretty well considering they had the disadvantage of me as a parent!

4. Your most and least favourite people in history?

Likes:

Wendy Valentine, founder of Redwings and later, Hillside Animal Sanctuary. Not really “history”, but all the same, she’s a favourite person.

Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, Labour MP who fought tooth and nail to bring us the National Health Service without which neither of my parents would have survived my childhood – make of that what you may!

Dislikes:

Matthew Hopkins (1620 – 1647 allegedly) Evil, just plain, downright evil and anyone who has persecuted others because of their race, religion, sex or whatever.

The massive scale of cruelty to animals that goes on every day - worldwide - to put meat on plates, eggs in egg cups and milk on cornflakes - so those people, who do and have done that. 

5. The country, city or other place you’d most like to visit?

Northumberland, particularly Seahouses - I don't know why, it's just somewhere I've always wanted to go.

6. Which five people would you like to meet (dead, alive, or fictional)?

My great grandmother, Isabella, who was widowed with 9 children and went to seek a better life in Canada and the USA in 1908, working as an exhibition cook.

Her husband, Charles, who died after he fell into the dry dock at Rotterdam.

My great uncle Laurie, son of the above, who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.  Laurie was a Company Sergeant Major and skilled signaller in the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment. I would love to see a photo of him.

Ann Boleyn – just because.

Dr Siri Paiboun – hero of Colin Cotterill’s series of books about Laos’s only coroner – failing that, I’d like to meet his creator.

7. What makes you laugh the most?

Lots of things make me laugh, but there is one person who makes me cry with laughter and that is Peter Kay.

8. If you could know the future, what would you wish for?

Good health and happiness for my family and a future without fear or pain for all living things, human and otherwise.

9. If you won the lottery and could donate money to charity, which charity would you choose – and why?

Hillside Animal Sanctuary. They look after so many animals, plus they do investigations into animal cruelty. That must be the hardest thing in the world to do; to observe and film cruelty and not be able to intervene.

  

10. Do you suffer from any little phobias or superstitions?

Tractors, spiders and I hate the number 53 and associate it with bad luck.

11. What’s your favourite guilty pleasure?

Playing computer games.

Eleven random facts about me…

1. I met a proper gangster once when I worked for a solicitor and he said, “What’s a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?” Which I thought was wonderful! He bypassed the reception downstairs and came straight up to my office.

2. Also whilst working for the solicitor (bear in mind this is a small town) some Hari Krishna guys in their orange robes bypassed the reception and came up to my office. They gave me some incense sticks and left.

3. I stood next to Felix Bowness at the traffic lights waiting to cross the road. He struck me as being incredibly clean and smart. He was here filming Hi-de-Hi and my daughter was a child extra in the final series.

4. I have seen Big Movie Star Clive Owen around town doing his shopping – go me! He is patron of our local cinema The Electric Palace which I used to play in as a child before it was restored.

5. I cannot stop growing money plants (Chinese Jade plants). When a bit breaks off, I can’t bear to throw it away so I put it in water and it takes root. At the moment I have seven, but I have given lots away recently. Anyone like a money plant?

6. I got lost in Woolworths in Clacton when I was very small. My mum found me by following the screams.

7. Sometimes if a train ferry was in and I had to get across the railway line while they were shunting trucks, the shunters used to let me climb through the train to get past. My mum went mad when she found out.

8. Also as a child I went up to the top of the train ferry terminal with lovely Mr Calver who operated the ramp. It was very high and steep (well I was very small). He also used to get me a ticket to go on the Parkeston Quay outing to Butlins at Clacton on a coach which was fantastic fun.

9. I was expelled from Sunday school.

10. I was banned from the local library.

11. I am cripplingly shy. Yeah I know, who’d have thunk it eh? But I am and it really does impact on my life.

Sorry if I’ve already told you about any of these – there is so little to tell!

My nominees are: (please feel free not to take this up):

Caroline at A Romance Writer in Waiting

Susan at Susan Jane Jones's Blog

Joanne at A Zigzag Road

Joanna at Brightwriter60

Maria at Gaelikaa's Diary

All lovely writers with lovely blogs!