Weirdly pinging

The Pedant-General has pinged me with the 'five weird things' meme, bless 'im. I fear I am rather boring in comparison with some people, but, here goes:

- I can speak backwards, fluently, and have been able to since I was five.
- I once appeared on Chinese TV, in a documentary about American universities. I was passing myself off as a student at Yale at the time, staying on a friend's floor there till I could get a flight home, and I happened to be enjoying a coffee that morning when the cameramen appeared. I didn't want to own up so I let them film me reading a paper and looking studenty.
- I chose my own middle name.
- I was the guitarist in The Purple Headed Warriors. The name was *not* my idea.
- I appear far younger than I actually am, which actually causes me problems at work. I am hoping someone markets a sort of reverse 'Just For Men' that adds grey to your hair, because I am tired of being mistaken for a student.

I have noticed that this blog gets far more hits (and, indeed, comments) when I write about rubbish as opposed to when I try to write about something clever. This may well influence editorial poicy here at the Lighthouse. Well, if I want to be a hit-whore anyway.