I was nominated (and I received!) an award in my 5th or 6th year of school during my time at Balgowlah Heights Public. The award was for ‘attendance’ I think. Yesterday I received another, no less prestigious, nomination. It came from Lizardin, with whom I have conducted several poetry duels in recent times. So …. thank you, Lizardin.

This one cannot be for attendance, as my level of attendance since those heady days of primary school has been very poor and I hardly ever turn up on time to anything, anymore. Apparently it is for ‘being nice’ – at least according to a rough translation from the original German. And so I accept it with great pride and fabricated humility.

But, as Lizardin herself points out, such awards come with enormous responsibilities attached. I am not good with responsibilities.

The first responsibility is to thank the person who nominated you. And I do. I think Lizardin is the most wonderful person in the entire universe and I am already altering my final will and testimony (just in the nick of time, perhaps!) to reflect this newly acquired respect and adoration.

The second responsibility is to nominate 7 other bloggers for the same award. This is where I disqualify myself and I expect to be stripped of my shiny new medal and humiliated in front of my peers at the presentation ceremony (when is the ceremony, by the way? Is there a dress code?) as a result. But the fact is that, as a responsibility phobic individual myself, I can hardly pass responsibility on to others. Besides that …. I don’t want to share. It’s my award. Go and get your own.

There is a series of questions to answer from Lizardin. I’ll do my best to answer them but I won’t be posing any of my own (see: responsibility, above).

Here are her questions:-

1. What have you forgotten?

Eh? What? How would I know? Is there someone else I am supposed to have thanked? Suddenly I feel like I’ve forgotten everything. What sort of question is this, anyway?

2. If you were guaranteed the answer to one question, what would it be?

Not this one.

3. What’s it like being you right now?

Not great. I wouldn’t recommend it.

4. What makes you nostalgic?

I do get a bit soppy and pathetic when I think too much about my kids. They are middle-aged now, so perhaps it’s time we all grew up.

5. What’s the most beautiful word in the world?

I don’t know, but I don’t think it would be an English word, somehow. English is a bit too introspective to be beautiful. Probably something in French, Italian or Spanish. But I don’t speak those languages.

6. What’s the best gift you’ve ever given?

People are so gracious. They always act as though every gift is the greatest thing ever. So who can tell?

7. Best gift you ever received?

I was given a Scalextric set for my 10th birthday (Scalextric is a electric model racing car set, for the information of the uninitiated – though I doubt that there could be too many such people) and I adored it for years. My mother gave it to someone else when I was about 18 and had left home. I was devastated. I bought myself another one only recently.

8. How many times a day do you look in the mirror?

The mirrors around here are pathological liars. So I never look at them. This does lead to some awkward social slip ups, from time to time, of course. I am frequently seen in public with food and red wine stains in my beard and my fly undone.

9. Whom do you secretly admire?

There was a girl that I used to sneak glimpses at every day when my bus stopped at her school on my way home. That was about 50 years ago and I still think about her. She looked back only once and, I am sure, has never thought of me since. You have to admire that sort of determined resistance.

10. What makes you feel safe?

Solitude.

11. Whom are you envious of? Why?

I have no way of really knowing but I’m pretty sure that some other guy ended up marrying that schoolgirl from the bus stop.