Interviews - the third round

From Paul:

1) Can you roll your tongue?
I refer the honourable gentleman to 100 things, #45.

2) If you had to be called something other than Cathy (officially not just some alias), what would you like to be called?
Not a name that people tend to mix up with others (Lucy/Lisa, Sarah/Susan, Catherine/Claire/Charlotte. Teachers were forever calling me Charlotte or Claire. I even once got Claire Young's school report by mistake). Not a name that has lots of variant spellings, because people would forever be asking me how to spell it (Catherine, Catharine, Kathryn, Katherine, Cathrine, Cathryn, Katharine). Something that's relatively unique, but not too pretentious. Um.

I haven't thought about this for long, but I suppose a name like Alyssa, Keira, Isobel (actually, not Isobel because of the whole Isabel/le, Ysabel/le, Isobel thing) or Aelyn. I've never considered alternative names before :)

3) What would be your ideal holiday?
The one that Aquarion proposed sounded pretty good actually - although I'd need more than 5 books :)

Okay, let's start again. Somewhere totally peaceful, relatively quiet and isolated would be ideal.Warm but not too hot, sunny with huge deep blue skies, white clouds and light breezes. (Am I getting a little too specific here?) For the sake of being completely destressed I'll forsake the internet connection - a desert island would be adequate provided I had: 1) some proper food, 2) a comfy bed, 3) diplomatic immunity amongst all local biting insects and other fauna, 4) enough books to keep myself occupied, 5) my music collection in playable format, 6) maybe someone else to talk to occasionally.

That sounds really antisocial - and rightly so because it is - but really, that's what I'd crave: calm and quiet and relaxation amongst idyllic scenery.

4) You are 70 years old. Has your unread books pile grown, or have you caught up?
:) Hopefully in the intervening fifty years I'd have read most of the books that I wanted to, and would by then be just keeping up with new books coming out, and filling in the rest of my reading schedule by rereading my top 100 or so books once a year.

5) What is the book you have reread the most?
Readers of recent days will be unsurprised to learn that - unless you want to count something like Each Peach Pear Plum - the answer is Gone With The Wind. I first read it when I was eleven, and kept rereading it, mounting up the number of readings at an astonishing rate. Pretty soon I noticed that it was becoming over-familiar, and starting to become a little bit tedious to read, so I then limited myself to reading it a maximum of three times a year. (I remember that very distinctly - goodness knows at what rate I had previously been reading it.) At the moment I'm only allowed to read it once per year, which seems to have turned into reading it on holiday each year - when I read it in just over two weeks' time it will be for the sixteenth time.

Blog genealogy

When else would I ever get to see my name in a list along with the likes of Shelley Powers, Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby, Simon Willison and Ian Hickson?

It seems I have spawned a blog, by someone else who's doing things with ESF.

I'm so proud.

(And also wondering whether this post has the lowest ratio yet of words to hyperlinks.)