Thank you, Gill, for my Stylish Blogger Award!

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Gill Fraser-Lee, who has a number of excellent blogs, has very deservedly won a Stylish Blogger Award which she accepted in her blog here. Gill has been very kind and supportive about my blog and was nice enough to nominate me for a Stylish Blogger Award as well.  Thank you Gill!  I am honoured to be nominated for this alongside other talented writers of entertaining blogs such as Lady Byron. I haven't checked out the other writers that Gill mentions, but I will be sure to do so (Janelle Dvorak and Sue Vorenberg). In honour of this award and to prove my stylish credentials I am writing this while wearing an evening dress, black elbow length evening gloves, silk stockings and I have my hair in a sophisticated chignon.

To accept this award I apparently have to admit to 10 things that you don't already know, and to nominate other stylish bloggers.  It is difficult to admit to 10 things that you don't know about me, because I have no shame and I tend to compulsively admit to embarrassing things on Twitter and on Facebook if I think that they might make people laugh.  I've even written a trivia page on my blog already, on which I have admitted to many things that any reasonable person would try not to mention.  I feel it would be cheating to re-use some of these, so I need to try to think of some more....

• I totally lied above.  I'm actually being a slob and lazing around in an old, baggy T-shirt.  Still think I'm stylish now, Gill?
• I have OCD tendencies.  I have different coloured pegs for hanging out washing, and I like to make sure that I don't mix colours on an item.  If I use more than one peg on something, then they need to be the same colour.
• The one thing that I can't do, but wish I could, is sing.  I have a horrible voice and can never seem to catch the right pitch.  I have a real mental block in singing publicly, probably because I don't like to cause suffering.  On my hen night I was challenged by one friend to sing something from the Sound of Music, and challenged by another friend to run naked around the cottage we had rented for the weekend.  The idea of the latter scared me less (although I didn't do it).
• I have flashed before, but I have never mooned anyone.  I don't think it is my best side.
• As part of a late teenage rebellion (about 10 years late) I got a tattoo.  It's the Chinese symbol for love - at least, as I don't speak Chinese, I really hope it is - on my right hip.  It 's a horrendous cliche, I know, but I still like it.  When I told Dad that I had got a tattoo he did the silent disapproval thing.

How many have I done now?  Five.  Ok. 

•  Whenever I get stressed, I buy camomile tea, thinking it is good for me but ignoring the fact that I hate the taste of the stuff.  I use about 2 teabags, get even more stressed forcing myself to drink something horrible, and then don't use the rest.  I bought some today thinking it might be different (it has honey and vanilla in it as well).  It will probably be just the same.
• At various times of my life I have been told I look like: Gillian Anderson, Kate Winslet, the young Tatum O' Neal, Kirsty MacColl (I'd tried doing my hair in rags and I ended up with Big Hair) and Sophie Aldred.  I don't think I look like any of them.
• I would still love to write a book, but I feel rather embarrassed about the idea of writing a sex scene because I would be worried that my parents might read it.
• I think that my first crush was Noel Edmonds.  That might be the most embarrassing thing that I have ever admitted to.
• There are 2 entries for this list that I wrote and then deleted because I didn't think that I should admit to them.

I am not as well connected as Gill, so I did find it a bit harder to think of my nominations for the Stylish Blogger Award.  But I have decided to go for......

•  My lovely husband Mark Cockram, who has a blog at "Nerdology".  He writes on films, gadgets and TV, and I think his blog is a lot more stylish than mine because he has more of the geek expertise needed to layout a blog and add gadgets and photos.  And I would like to see if he can surprise me with any of his 10 things...
• Annalisa Crawford, who has a very interesting blog about her writing at "Wake up, eat, write sleep".  I was at 6th form with Annalisa and lost touch for a while, and it is good to have got back in touch through Facebook.