It’s all about me me me…

Meme tagging… Hey – I am ‘it’ and maybe you are next… hold your breath..

Chan has done the damage by tagging me to the ever evolving internet meme.

So here goes 5 things you thought you’d never want to know about me…

[1] I’m a semi-celebrity flower-power kid

When I was much younger my Mums Dunedin flatting community included the likes of Vincent Ward, Tim Shadbolt and other now famous hippies. I was front-row at an anti-war protest riding on Tim Shadbolt’s shoudlers. I appeared on the front page of the Otago Daily Times when I attended a James K Baxter gig (I’m just trying to track down the photo). I’m also somehow associated with the Blerta Bus and The Formula.

[2] I was homeless and lived under a tree…

For about a week I lived with my Mum under a big tree up near Koriniti up the Whanganui river. It rains alot up the river but the tree kept us dry – I was only about 4 or 5, but I remember it well. This probably started my fascination with sleeping under trees. In the 80s I used to take a day off school here and there to go on ‘cultural excursions’ to see bands in Wellington. Near the top of the cable car at the Wellington Botanical Gardens there’s a low-hanging pine tree – that’s where I used to sleep on my visits in the late `80s.

[3] I’m still learning how to talk…

I can barely communicate with the spoken word unless I concentrate really really hard. My off-the-chart stutter was so bad when I was young that I would go by for a day or more without saying a word. I also used to get the living daylights beaten out of me by school yard bullies – 30 years later I still remember who you are – shame on you. I learned Judo at age 7 and after that I fared a lot better. But at high school silly little kids become gangs of silly big kids so that was a bad time for me as well. I was sent on various speech therapy courses, learnt how to speak   “s l o w l y” – but then as soon as I was cast out into the real world it would all turn to mush. In my teenage years I worked out that the problem wasn’t my stutter – it was my self confidence – and being afraid to even speak in the first place (something they never ever taught me at speech-therapy). So I did really scary stuff for a person who could barely string a sentence together – at my first job as music editor at Tearaway Magazine I interviewed a few famous people including Red Head King Pin.

At age 20 I decided to throw myself in the deep end and started a two-hour world music radio show on Radio One in Dunedin. The show included live-to-air interviews with the likes of Kapka Kassabova (when she had just arrived in NZ and could barely speak English), Angelique Kidjo and Radio Tarifa.

[4] Nail polish fetish?

I temporarily succumbed to the nail polish fetish of 3Ds band drummer, Dominic Stones – and then again with my flatmate Ange at Anvil House. It’s really fun (guys – you should try it). While we’re on the fashion thing, my past also includes a gothic phase, a purple phase (loud royal purple), and for years I had really long hair in the form of plaited mini-dreadlocks down to my butt. Comparatively I look dead-conservative now!

[5] I collect quirky stuff…

While I’m not an avid collector I do keep an eye out for soft toys with extroverted psychological problems, transistor radios from the 50s and 60s and funky hats…

So, there you go… To keep this meme going I here-by tag…

Ali, Hayden, Bob, Simon and Toki