The Death Of Memes Strikes Again

Tremble before me, mere mortals, for I am the Death of Memes.

This time I got tagged by Katherine with:
"twenty-five random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose twenty-five people to be tagged. You must tag the person who tagged you."

You know me better than that.
This is where memes come to die. Any tag that stumbles in here doesn't get out alive.
You know the rules:

- If you feel like doing this, do it;
- Don't tag anyone or I'll come round and punch you hard in the head.
- That's it.

So … Twenty-five things.
Normally this would be easy; this is my 927th. post and a frighteningly high proportion of those have been memes or self-confessional ramblings so I could easily do a no-brainer and just re-hash old classics.
But a fellow blogger told me this morning: "Bollocks to that! No way are you getting away with copying and pasting old crap."

Hey ho.
Because I don't want to risk a slap I will comply with her wishes and deprive you of such re-hashed favourites as "the cum-eating episode" and "I'm A Celebrity, Beat The Crap Out Of Me".

Sheesh! Twenty-five things that I've not written before? I can't even think of one!
Hang on …
Okay:
1) My favourite poem at the moment (which will probably change by the time you read this):
My favourite poem as of this Saturday lunchtime is "Blashey-wadder" by the splendid Shetland Islands shop-assistant and appalling mandolin player Jen Hadfield.
This is from her latest collection, "Nigh No-Place" available from Bloodaxe Books (ISBN 978-1-85224-793-5) and is of course copyright so go out and buy the book NOW so I don't get into trouble for copying this out:
Blashey-wadder is Shetland dialect; "wadder" means weather and "blashey" is about as onomatopœic as it gets.

Blashey-wadder.
by Jen Hadfield.

At dusk I walked to the postbox,
and the storm that must've passed you earlier today
skirled long, luminous ropes of hail between my feet
and I crackled in my waterproof
like a roasting rack of lamb.

And across the loch,
the waterfalls blew right up off the cliff
in grand plumes like smoking chimneys.

And on the road,
even the puddles ran uphill.

And across Bracadale,
a gritter, as far as I could tell,
rolled a blinking ball of orange light
ahead of it, like a dungbeetle
that had stolen the sun.

And a circlet of iron was torn from a byre
and bowled across the thrift.

And seven wind-whipped cows
clustered under a bluff.

And in a rockpool,
a punctured football reeled around and around.

And even the dog won't heel since yesterday
when - sniffing North addictedly -
he saw we had it coming -

and I mean more'n wet weak hail
on a bastard wind.

Wonderful!
Now read it again only slowly and out loud.

One down; twenty-four to go.
At least I've not repeated myself yet.
More meme crap tomorrow as I really can't be arsed right now.