8 Things you may not want to know about me

I have been challenged by the misanthropic Mr Fumier to write eight autobiographical facts. So without getting too up close and personal with myself, here are eight things you may not want to know about me:

1. I set out for Australia in 1975 and still haven't got there yet.

2. Having heard a new word as a child, and always eager to enlarge my vocabulary, I asked my mother, "Mummy, what's a prostitute?" She promised to tell me when I was grown up, but she still hasn't. I guess I haven't grown up yet...

3. As a child, I had several out-of-body experiences. I can still vividly recall looking down on myself pitching a tent while setting up camp with the Boy Scouts.

4. I attended the same school as Paul Boateng, later Britain's first black cabinet minister. In a television interview some years ago, he pronounced himself lucky to have been at a school that had little racial prejudice. "Huh!", sneered my brother, "You should hear what his sister [my brother's classmate] has to say about that."

5. As a child, I saved a younger playmate's life when he was choking on a sweet, by turning him upside down and slapping him so violently on the back that it popped out.

6. Photographs I have taken have been published in the South China Morning Post, Photo Asia, Fragrant Harbour and Recruit.

7. I learned driving at the late age of 38, ad scuba diving at 48. At 58 I plan to take up skiving.

8. I have never met anyone (including Americans) who likes George W. Bush or supports his policies.