Five things you didn't know about me

Hmm - thanks Mrs Blethers! I suppose you've shamed me into blogging again. So if anyone's out there, here are five things you probably don't know about me:

1. I repeated a year of primary school. This was, I believe, because I was considered too young and immature to go to secondary school at the age of ten. Somehow, between moving from Bristol to Leeds at age five I lost a year. I repeated primary five with a terrifying teacher called Miss Wilson, who suddenly became my friend second time round and ceased from writing scathing comments on my miserable, blot-ridden efforts at writing and even allowed me to play Puck in the end of term production of Midsummer Night's Dream (edited highlights) by dint of my being able to turn a cartwheel.

2. I have won three prizes in my life. One was a runner's-up cup in the school sports. One was a 'Bedside Guardian' for a Christmas story in that paper; the story was 'The Gospel According to St Mousethew' and was an account of the Nativity from the POV of a mouse. The last was a big red and cream vacuum flask from Maxwell House Coffee, and I had no recollection of entering the competition when it arrived. Hmm - nothing really changes . . .

3. I have three kidneys. This was discovered during hospital investigations for recurring infections. Apparently there is neither advantage nor disadvantage in having an extra one, which is rather disappointing. I wonder if I have any other spare parts.

4. I was in Czechoslovakia in 1968 immediately preceeding the Prague Spring. The Russians invaded while I was there with my brother. We brought a Czech boy back to Glasgow with us - he was my brother's pen-friend - and he stayed with us for eight months, during which time his father defected to Switzerland.

5. I was once mother to a woodpigeon called George. My grandad brought him home from the woods for me when he was a squab and had fallen out of the nest. He wasn't fledged and had a voracious appetite for porridge, which I fed him by forcing it down his throat with a pencil. Despite this apparently cruel treatment he thrived and grew into a fine woodpigeon. Trouble was, he didn't know he was a pigeon and meant to fly. He followed me about all over the place, waddling like a duck. Eventually I persuaded him to fly by pushing him off a wall a few times. After that, he remained with us until the spring when he disappeared - presumably to find a wife and have an egg. Actually, I have no idea if he was George or Georgina.

There. You really wanted to know all that, didn't you?