1. I am an Englishman abroad, living in Wales and I have now lived abroad for longer than I lived at home.
2. My Will asks that I be buried in England, (and if that is not possible I have asked that my heart be buried there,but that is not an invitation to remove it now).
3. I took Ancient History at ‘A’ level and my daughter now wants to read it at university, although we have never discussed it.
4. One day I intend to plant a new forest.
5.One side of my family fled Germany to come to England in the early 1900’s, the other half fled France in the mid 1500’s to come to England. Somewhere, at sometime we all became mongrels.
6.The single funniest thing I have ever seen was Del Boy falling through the space in the bar, pint in hand. It may be corny but it is the timing people, the timing.
7. My best friend and best man died in a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty boiler whist I was on honeymoon – RIP John Kubiak.
8. I once attended the second wedding of a friend who had the same best man as for his first wedding. The best man started his speech with “As I was saying last time…”.
9. Huddersfield 1978/9 was the most drunken year I have ever spent (and one of the most fun).
10. I ran a company in Moscow for a while, and they insisted I had my own bodyguard.
11. If I could be granted any skill it would be to play acoustic guitar and sing.
12. My earliest memory is of crawling down to the bottom of my bed (pre-duvets) and not being able to find my way out.
13. The first single I bought was “Ernie, the fastest milkman in the west” by Bennie Hill.
14. Italian, Chinese & Lebanese is my answer to “What are your favourite cuisines?”.
15. I collect trees, and have, for example, a conker tree grown from a conker from Versailles.
16. I have a scar on my left index finger from trying to open a golf ball with a boning knife.
17.I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance every few years to keep me sane.
18. I simply do not do beetroot.
19. Things that drive me nuts #1: Poor punctuality: get up earlier, leave earlier, turn up at the polling station earlier…
20.Things that drive me nuts #2: People in cars who do not signal at roundabouts and make everyone else break, stop, wait. Learn your Highway code damn it, and think about others.
21. I was on the steps of a courtroom in Southport (helping a solicitor whilst on my year out at college) when I heard that John Lennon died, and in a pub just off Golden Square in London as 9/11 unfolded.
22. I’m a dog person, not a cat person. Gizmo the Cairn Terrier is my current dog.
23. My honeymoon was in Kenya. Moral: never buy a 3 foot wooden giraffe on the 2nd day.
24. If I could do anything, all day, it would probably be playing tennis.
25. My favourite joke is Q? “What is red and invisible”, A: “No tomatoes”.
Copernican inversions and other engaging nonsense 
These will b used against you at some stage unless a brown packet with several G’s of British used notes lands surreptitiously in my near vicinity.
Hi Baz, thanks for taking the time to read all of this. ‘Fraid no pay-off – if I’m dull enough to publish I have to live with the consequences!
Hi Phil, I couldn’t reply to you on Twitter as they don’t let you send messages to anyone who isn’t following you – so please follow us!! You asked me to tell you more about us – We cover the North of England, we have many pet friendly properties, started in July 2010 after being made redundant from another company! The company we were with was a small friendly one which was bought out by a large American company resulting in all the sales staff being turfed out of our jobs! Myself and two colleagues decided to go for it and pooled our redundancy money – Dales & Vales Cottage Holidays is the result of a lot of hard work, stress, laughter and tears but it’s coming good now! We have almost 50 years experience in the cottage industry between us. Our website now has about 125 cottages on it, with more joining us every day. I find that a good sense of humour gets you through a lot of things in life, music too – I notice on your blog that you’re into music, me too! My son has his own band, probably not your taste, more funk/pop/rap sort of stuff but very good at what they do.
Anyway, enough of my rambling on, thanks for asking about us, love your blog, very funny! Cheers for now, Lorraine Gilmour
Where do you keep the trees you collect?
Hello Phil
In response to your Twitter message here is a little more about me and Ditto Languages.
After graduating from four fantastic years at Bristol University, including a year studying at universities in France and Italy, I was desperate to return to the sunnier climes of Italy. I took a 3 month unpaid internship at a translation agency in Tuscany and ended up staying for 2 years, moving from general intern/secretary to Project Manager and Lead Italian>English Translator.
Bad management meant the agency did not succeed, and in a “we can do this better” moment of clarity, a colleague and I left and our clients came with us. Ditto Languages was born.
Ditto Languages has since gone from strength to strength. We have offices in the UK and Italy and a network of linguists all over the world. We provide translation, proofreading, editing, localization, interpreting and voice-over services in all major languages. All our translators are highly trained and have a specialisation in a certain sector, ranging from commerce and finance to engineering and medicine.
That’s enough rambling on for now, I’ll leave you with a few random things about me:
1) My sister, Rhiannon, was also a Fleetwood Mac inspired child.
2) I hate marmite, love twiglets.
3) I have lived in 5 countries.
But Phil, Beetroot is sooooo good for you
http://www.lovebeetroot.co.uk/healthy_info/beetroot-benefits.asp