"8 Things About You" Revisited - friends reply to the challenge

Back at the beginning of June I (grudgingly) accepted one of those blogworld 'tags' to reveal 8 previously unsuspected facts about my life; and I passed the challenge on (even more hesitatingly) to a number of my blog chums.

Well, my old butler (really!), Snopes, has just sent in a belated contribution (buried in the comment thread to my original post: I might so easily have missed it! I think I'll re-print it in this post for easier access). This prompts me to review the success of my 'tag' efforts on this; and I think that only Moonrat (in bed with Harry Potter these last few days) is still defaulting. Although I have lost the link to Earthling's blog for the time being (she was invitation-only for a while, and then, I think, relaunched on another address).

Anyway, Leah finally got around to answering the challenge last week.

HiK (Home in Kabul) was much more prompt. Almost supernaturally so! Faster than a speeding bullet.....

OMG followed just a couple of days later.

And Tulsa, 'The Constant Socialite', despite her initial protestation of reluctance, caved in to the peer pressure soon after.

And, for your reference, it was Jeremiah who originally 'tagged' me.

Now, here's Snopes's two penn'orth:

1) I killed a man once. It was during my National Service, in Malaya during The Emergency. It is disturbing and shaming memory for me. It was also a turning-point in my life because up until then I had been seriously considering a career in the Army.

2) In my later years, I have become quite proficient in the game of bowls, and it is now my major hobby.

3) I am distantly related to one of the founders of http://www.snopes.com/, a popular American website which debunks 'urban legends'. She and her husband claim that they took the name from a family of characters in the works of William Faulkner, but I suspect she was also secretly paying tribute to her own family tree.

4) Master Froog won me in a raffle. It is a strange story but quite true.

5) I can wiggle my left ear but not my right.

6) I am fond of a pint of bitter, but I have never touched strong spirits.

7) Inspired by Master Froog's recommendations on his blog, I have just read 'The Third Policeman', and it is indeed extremely entertaining.

8) For nearly 20 years now I have spent a good portion of every summer in a villa just outside of Porto. I am ashamed to admit that my progress with the language has been very limited.