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10 Day You Challenge - Day 1: 10 Secrets

It's been a while since I've messed around with a meme... And I said a week or two back that I might give this one a go... Although for a while I was a little hesitant because, first, it seemed a little self-absorbed, but then I remembered that I write a blog which is full of my opinions, so how much more self-absorbed can I appear; and second, frankly, the whole thing seemed a tad girly - I didn't see any other males engaging with it... but then Creideamh forged the way ahead for others with a Y chromosome...
So here goes... I'll fit them in when I have time/can be bothered... If nothing else it will help members of my new congregation see what sort of a basketcase they now have as a pastor...The theory is that on each of 10 days we make the following disclosures: 
1:   10 Secrets
2:   9 Loves
3:   8 Fears
4:   7 Wants
5:   6 Places
6:   5 Foods
7:   4 Books
8:   3 Films
9:   2 Songs
10: 1 Picture
Now my first response is to moan that I wish it was in a different order; I could offer you a list of hundreds of foods, books, films and songs, and have done on previous memes... But long lists of wants, fears, loves and secrets... Get out of here...
Especially starting with secrets... I'm temperamentally incapable of keeping secrets, actually that isn't true... I'm good at the pastoral confidentiality stuff, and there are certain things about myself that no amount of sodium pentathol never mind a meme would get out of me... But for everything in between I've probably bored you to tears with personal disclosures... But here goes with inconsequential secrets:
1: Whilst at primary school I was a compulsive fantasist - on one occasion I told my P1 teacher that my parents had adopted my best friend... Whilst on another I was asked to draw a picture of what had happened at the weekend, leading me to draw a picture of me and this same best friend on a trip to the country watching a horse get chewed up by a combine harvester. This best friend proved his worth in backing me to the hilt in both stories...
2: Actually my inability to tell the truth continued into secondary school when I once claimed in a year one English class to have read The Lord of the Flies and to describe in detail the mechanism by which the boys had ended up on the island... The teacher must have known that I was telling porkies but never publicly accused me of such... Either that or he hadn't read the book and didn't know I was making up all the rubbish I was spouting... I still haven't read The Lord of the Flies...
3: I hate having to ask people to do things... not because I am a control freak or think that I can do everything better than other people, although that is true at times, but because I am convinced from the outset that they will say no and I take that as a personal rejection, even though I always make clear that I am entirely OK with them saying no... Again I'm lying... Do we see a theme here? I may return to this under day 8.
4: Following on from the last one, I really don't like cold-calling anyone on the phone, especially if I am having to ask them to do something for me. I'm fine people talking to me on the phone, but just don't ask me to call you... Part of it is about body language and not knowing what people are REALLY meaning, but also a wariness about my own articulacy... I much prefer to have face to face contact or write things down in a letter or email so that I can check what I have said before posting it or pressing send... And when you see how incoherent my emails or blog posts are AFTER I have checked them, you can imagine how garbled I fear my verbal communication is at times...
5: And again following on from the previous one, I feel more vulnerable in a one to one situation than I do in front of a large crowd... Great for the Sunday element of my calling, not so great on the Monday-Saturday pastoral engagement... But I work hard at this one...
6: I cry at the drop of a hat while watching TV or films, particularly when I'm on my own or in the dark seclusion of a cinema... I first noticed this when as an awkward teenager I found myself bawling my eyes out at Its a Wonderful Life... Nothing unusual there you say, anyone who doesn't cry at that film has got a swinging brick in place of a heart. However, I have, at other times found myself crying at The Incredibles, and even at an episode of Doctors on BBC1... I need treament...
7: I am strangely addicted to Doctors, the lunchtime soap in the same way that I was addicted to Neighbours while at university in Edinburgh... If I am in the house around lunchtime I end up having my lunch in front of it, and it is now known as Doctors o'clock... It started out because I watched an episode written by a guy I know and then realised that he was one of the executive producers and when I was off ill a few years ago I became hooked. Again I need treatment...
8: To relax I paint model soldiers... Badly... Not Warhammer Fantasy/Science fiction stuff... That's too weird... But old-style 25mm historic metal figurines... I'm currently working on an Egyptian army from the New Kingdom era, a later Greek/Syracusan army, a Viking army and French and English armies from the Hundred Years war. I started this hobby back when I was a teenager and the Egyptians were an army I bought of a friend 35 years ago... I still haven't finished painting them. In my defence I put away such childish things for about 25 of those years and only unearthed them a few years ago when I needed something to do as therapy... I just paint them... then they go into one of the many boxes I have to store them... I have no room to display them and not sure that I would want to, and no-one wargames with that scale or era anymore...
9: Despite my love of reading it is notoriously low brow: I have never read nor intend to read Austen, Eliot, Gaskell, Proust and many other supposed literary greats... Telling me that they are must reads only makes it more unlikely...
10: I have read but don't like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy... I also don't like, although many of these are no secret, country and western music, broccoli, golf - except for the Ryder Cup, cricket, bagpipes, Charles Dickens, Formula One, Eastenders, Manchester United, TOWIE/Big Brother/Geordie Shore/Big Fat Gypsy anything, Sunday night costume dramas, ITV news, The Daily Mail, shellfish, Classic FM, gin...

That enough to be going on with?

Cheers

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