Reasons to hate tag

Blast! I've been tagged. I hated this stupid game in the school playground and I feel much the same about it on the Internet now. I'm just non-aggressive, see, and don't have the heart to chase people around and poke them, because it makes me feel guilty. Maybe that's one reason why I'm still single. That and the fact that I don't much like being poked, physically or emotionally, which is something that some people simply cannot comprehend. Anyway, friends are people who will viciously tag you and then leave you on your own in the corner to cry. That much I have learned from life.

But, with a resigned sigh, on we go with the game. Five things that most people don't know about me.

Well, I've been horribly self-revealing recently, so there's not much that the inner circle doesn't know. So, conscientious writer that I am, I must first consider the identity of my target audience. Maybe it's that lovely someone whom I secretly hope follows my blog and whom I would very much like to realise what a wonderful, charming, witty, irresistible, unparalleled, match-made-in-heaven sort of chap I am.

Oh dear. I don't do that stuff. This is me. Simple. What you see is what you get. No more, no less. And I can only hope that maybe my secret would-be admirer will find that sufficient. If she ever clicks this way.

But here goes.

1. My psychotherapist thinks being a Caesarean birth is one reason that I can't swim.
Blimey, there's three for the price of one. I defer to Anna MR on the Caesarean analysis, which she summarises so well. My contribution to that ongoing thread is that being 'dragged from the pool' has apparently traumatised me out of a healthy relationship with water.

2. I have never had sex with anyone who speaks the same first language as myself.
No nationality lists here. That's just crass butterfly collecting. I'm not going to become the sort of person who keeps an atlas and a checklist under the bed. But, so far, no mother-tongue English speakers for me. I just have to live with the idea that women who fully understand what I'm saying turn me down more often.

3. I failed my driving test four times.
I have my licence. I passed the test at the fifth attempt eleven years ago and haven't driven since. Actually, I shouldn't have passed then. I had to drive onto the pavement during the test to get round a bus, but as I gave the examiner a running commentary on the situation, he let it go. He even told me it was 'a good drive'.

4. I was school athletics champion at age 15.
Come on, you've got to allow me one ego-booster. One chance to impress my secret would-be admirer. I was a sprinter: 100 metres, 200 metres, and triple jump. Pretty good, too, if I may say so. My little trophy is gathering dust somewhere in England, inscribed 'Victor Ludorum 1983'. But where's the athletics scouting and coaching network when you need it? Not in small-town Yorkshire, anyway.

5. I received a court summons for refusal to pay poll tax.
Alright, at that point I went all weak-kneed, caved in, and paid up. I would have made a case, though. At the time I was 23, working for little more than pocket money at a kids' adventure holiday camp, and living in a tent in a field in the middle of the Brecon Beacons. I didn't want to swap that for a police cell. But maybe my procrastination and paperwork went some way to proving that the poll tax wasn't really like the council rates. And we won in the end.

There. Make of that lot what you will.

I will not now pass the tag on. Partly because every current blogger that I know has already been tagged, and partly because I hardly ever tagged anyone in the playground either. But if any visitor happens by here and would like to be tagged voluntarily, they should feel free to pick up the challenge.

Go on! You know you want to!