Diversions

Questions taken from Reluctant Blogger's website

WHAT WAS I DOING TEN YEARS AGO?

I was living in Tooting Bec, London, with my school friend, Adam Lidster. I had recently split up with my girlfriend, a super market check out girl and mother of a two year old boy, who lived in a somewhat medieval looking village in Suffolk. I was working for a backstreet company making display cases for shopping malls. Most enchantingly, no joke, this could involve me pulling a gypsy wagon by hand from the Oval all the way to Covent Garden through, and in spite of, the morning traffic.

WHAT ARE 5 THINGS ON YOUR LIST TO DO TODAY?

I don’t keep such lists, but I’ll not be a pedantic twit. To have lunch. To hang around the office, in which I have no work to do, surfing the internet, drinking coffee. To organise papers about sundry, official matters relating to next year. To go see a flat in a colourfully named place – Mahboula - in Southern Kuwait. To consider the question of dinner.

THINGS I WOULD DO IF I BECAME A BILLIONAIRE

Consider at last that Justice had been done!

No, seriously. Provisionally, I would feel very happy, indeed! I would not immediately give up my job but certainly would, soon enough. I would not, I hope, tell anyone I’d miraculously become a billionaire for at least a few weeks, except for a financial advisor. I would not, I think, want to give away too much of the actual capital (though I might change my mind). Rather, so I could give away permanently, I would want, annually, to give away most of the interest earnt on the money. I would give money to people I admired and felt needed the money, to specific individuals in dire need and to humanitarian causes (as directly as possible. I distrust charities and the Governments to whom they sometimes have to give through). Possibly, I might want to found an unashamedly elitist University, open only to those who can score highly according not only to intellectual, but moral and spiritual, criteria. My own personal lifestyle wouldn’t change much, though presumably I wouldn’t have to worry any more about vulgar, boring things like ‘financial security’.

FIVE PLACES I HAVE LIVED

Cambridge. 69 Barton Road in Newnham, near Grantchester.
The majestic, ethereal city of Durham, Seat of the Prince Bishop’s. Place of congregation of noble, undecadent spirits. Before Elberry’s time, just.
London. Tooting Bec, Tooting Broadway. Islington
Slovakia. Bratislava, including the very famous and imposing Petrazalka.
Kuwait. Salmiya, above a bakery, a toyshop, many Indians and Bangladeshis, and a very busy road.

THREE OF MY BAD HABITS

Not sure I’m qualified to say…how about –

Eating too much
Not having enough sex
Eating sardines direct from the tin; hating housework, generally

FIVE JOBS I HAVE HAD

Wine waiter
Barman
Gypsy wagon puller
Telesalesman (less than a week)
Teacher of English

HOW DID YOU NAME YOUR BLOG?

It is supposed, I believe, to be some kind of conceivably pretentious aspiration to live in the eyes of eternity.