I am rather excited about this as I quite like winning things and getting awards, but it doesn’t happen all that often. In primary school my teachers commented on what a gracious loser I always was. Apparently I would always smile and be happy about the successes of my peers. My netball team in the primary school league ‘Thornber’s Thunderers’ lost every single match that year. I had two birthday parties with teams, one was an assault course and the other was a treasure hunt. My team lost both. I was a loser on my birthday!

As you can probably understand winning or being awarded something is a very lovely experience and one step closer to overshadowing my loser memories.

Now I have the ‘Honest Scrap’ award I have to share seven facts about myself and then pass this award on to my favourite seven (honest) blogs.

In the spirit of winning awards my seven facts are about things I have won:

1. I won a trophy for the best entry in the miscellaneous categories in the Children’s Tent at the Ainsdale Flower Show
2. We finally won the pub quiz at the Smoke Rooms in Clapham when our competitors/arch enemies ‘Southside Johnny’ went away for a week
3. I was elected Vice President Representation in the Students Union at Bournemouth University winning by a landslide
4. At the end of sixth form I won half of the ‘Monica & Chandler Award’ for best couple
5. My team won a quiz (and wine!) at a Royal Mail graduate event
6. I bought a ticket for my nieces primary school raffle and won a bottle of Martini Rosso. The worst prize ever!
7. I was given a bottle of champagne for being the first person in Sainsbury’s Southport to get 100% from a mystery shopper

And the seven honest bloggers I will pass the award to are:

1. Rats Saw God – a nice mix of thoughts, life and everything else. I always enjoy James’ posts.
2. Secret Diaries of a Wannabe Yummy Mammy - A wonderful woman who is using her blog (and Save One Mammy) to raise awareness of the problems of getting a divorce, getting custody but not being allowed to move back to the country she is from. She also keeps us updated on being a mammy and the trials and tribulations of dating!
3. Awful Library Books – Not just for librarians. These are the most awful books found in libraries and put into one blog by Mary & Holly. It is hilarious!
4. Graeme Watson Photography – A fantastic photoblog of excellent photography by an amateur who is very rapidly turning pro.
5. On Music, Maths and Moggies – The title says it all, an enjoyable read every time
6. Mister Phill – Phill is a professional photographer and his photos are so enjoyable to consume that is doesn’t matter if you know no one in them. He’s also one of the most honest pros you will find!
7. Whitespider1066 – Darren’s outdoor blog covers the TGO Challenge, hiking and outdoors info and life in general. Enjoyable even if you are an armchair hiker who keeps promising themselves they will put on their walking boots next weekend…

And of course don’t forget Jo’s Kitchen. Thank you Jo!!!

On Friday I was in Durham for an interview at the University Library. I obviously impressed them as I got offered the job! I’ll start in January so I have a couple of months to get myself sorted with a place to live and to move up there. I am very excited indeed about this adventure. I just need to find some new friends up there!

Back to London on Saturday, the train journey flew by thanks to the wonders of technology, talking to a friend in China on Skype from a train somewhere between Durham and London. It’s amazing that it’s so easy to keep in touch these days. Another perk to the journey was that my general buzz from having a new job was added to by a compliment from one of the train staff who said that my smile had made his day!

Saturday night was Danielle’s Halloween party. Despite minimal effort and cost (£1.50 for a witch’s hat) I was quite impressed with my outfit. It was a fantastic party with many friends. However on Sunday I wasn’t feeling quite so great (two hangovers in one week is not something that has happened for a LONG time). Sunday was spent catching up on Gilmore Girls followed by The Omen. We were planning to watch all four, but after the second we weren’t convinced it was going to get that much better so we gave up on movie watching and ordered Chinese!

It’s only 9 days until New York, which means only 8 days until I need to move out of my house. As Thursday and Friday will be spent on yet more leaving parties I better get myself into gear and start packing tonight!

I started reading it on Monday. It was my second reading of it. My first was after buying it because I saw it in a bookshop and remembered how much I had loved the show (the mpdg – that’s ‘miles per dave gorman’ had appealed the mathematical side of me,or perhaps it had just been the general randomness). Anyway I had picked it out on Monday because I needed something to take my mind of something else I was waiting to be resolved. Unfortunately ‘Are you Dave Gorman?’ made me think more about the unresolved thing and so I stopped reading it until later that evening when the thing got resolved (I know it sounds all very mysterious… it’s not really, it’s just a whole other story that is probably not appropriate to be shared in a blog right now.)

Anyway once the thing was all resolved I started reading it again, and have now, within 48 hours finished it (and found time to also do the pub quiz and go to work… sleeping time has been slightly down). I do worry about this. I have read a new Harry Potter book in a similar length of time… but that is ok (well for some people it still isn’t, however there are a few thousand people that will agree that reading the new Harry Potter book within 48 hours of release is the actions of an almost sane and normal person). However I have read ‘Are you Dave Gorman?’ before – I know how it starts, I know how it goes along and I also know how it finishes… In fact reading the book again I always knew what was coming next. But the strange thing is that I read it in a manner I would read a very exciting NEW book where I didn’t know what was coming next. My only conclusion is that I can identify with Dave, I may not be male, or called Dave Gorman, or have ever gone on a quest for Dave Gormans, or indeed any of my own namesakes (I believe there are a few in this country, but I’m not about to go looking for them) – but I have been in the position of doing something that is seemingly silly and pointless, but that is very fundamentally important for an unknown reason. In fact I realise that being of my family name is a special thing (we’re a ’special’ and individual bunch), we all seem to have this ability to become obsessed about things that really don’t seem to merit obsession.

I do also identify with Danny as I have also been the one being dragged along not quite sure how I got involved in something, or indeed finding myself encouraging odd behaviour I am not quite sure I approve of. But that’s why I love my best mate to bits… as described above sometimes I’m a Dave Gorman, but over the years (we’ve known each other since we were 11) her actions have allowed the Danny Wallace side of me to surface. I like variety.

Anyway it is now 4pm and I have just spent far too much time reading a book that I intended to put down about two and a half hours ago whilst having a quick break from work. I intended to spend lots of my afternoon doing work, which means now the rest of my afternoon and evening will be spent doing work, but at least I can’t get distracted by the book anymore. I think about an hour ago I decided to just finish the book so it would no longer be a distraction.

Can you see a flaw in my plan yet? This book has not stopped being a distraction. I have now managed to write over 600 words about this book instead of doing work. And between finishing the book and writing this I went onto the archive of Neighbours episodes I had bookmarked a while ago (I knew it would come in useful at some point) to find the episode on the 27th November 2001 with Dave Gorman in it (not THE Dave Gorman, just a character in that one episode they named after Dave Gorman). Obsessed with random stuff I shouldn’t be obsessed with? Moi?!

Ok that’s enough of me writing about Dave Gorman… just before I go – thought I should let you know we came 4th in the Pub Quiz (2nd week running we haven’t been in the Top 3, it’s a disgrace… at least I wasn’t there last week). I didn’t feel too responsible. I had made some definite contributions – ‘8 B’s in a B?’ 8 Bits in a Byte of course! They call themselves animators (or technical directors or whatever) on a daily basis, and me having not been a proper computer geek on a daily basis for three years I was frankly disappointed in them that I was the only one to get that one (I also got ‘3 W in M?’ – I’ll leave you to ponder the answer). I was disappointed in myself for not joining in a conversation I should have joined in during the questions being asked stage… It wasn’t until the answers stage I realised that my knowledge of the Mr Men could have bagged us an extra point and put us joint 3rd , so I suppose I am somewhat responsible after all.

I also realised that on not quite three pints I get a tad tipsy. Walking down my road I looked ahead and thought ‘well at least the idiot parked behind me made an even worse job of parallel parking than I did today’. I then realised that the badly parked car was actually mine, and then realised that as there was no longer anyone parked behind me I could perhaps go in, get my car keys and manoeuvre the car into a better position. I then in my head rewound to the point where I had started thinking about my car, and how drunk the conversation with myself in my head sounded, and realised that I had perhaps leave the car badly parked as it was.

Along with the joy of winning came a £50 bar tab – which between 9 of us (yes ok we won with a large team… but nevermind, we still won) isn’t exactly a whole heap of money, but it’s at least a pint each. I have been entrusted with it until week after next when all the team are together again!

Anyway I better go… things to do (get up to date with my personal life as work seems to be filling most of my time!) and places to go (catching up with N later – which is of little significance to everyone out there who doesn’t know who N is, but at least you know I have a social life and am not spending my evenings sad and alone)… and then back to work tomorrow (yes I know tomorrow is Sunday, but no rest for the wicked – or for the one that took the promotion)