Every Record Wins Kreativ Blogger Award!

Just three months in and already the awards are flying through the door. Well, not exactly flying, and that’s my own, inaccurate, use of the plural. But hey – a shiny Kreativ Blogger award statue now sits proudly on my desk. Metaphorically speaking. I don’t actually have a desk. Or a statue.

To such giddy heights I have to thank Kate at Beforeiforget who bestowed the award to this blog. Kate has her own corner of blogging paradise which is well worth checking out.

For the benefit of those, including myself, who had no idea that blogs got awards, The Kreativ Blogger award originated in Scandinavia somewhere and requires its award winners to give a few facts about themselves, and then to hand out the award to five other bloggers.

As the more astute amongst you will realise, this is a sort of self-congratulatory chain letter, designed to spread the word about what people enjoy reading. For the financially literate, think of it as a sort of Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme where no-one loses any money. Movie fans can compare it to that Japanese horror film Ring with the videotape that you have to watch and pass on, but without the  ghostly girl climbing out of the telly. Facebook fans can picture those posts that try to morally obligate you to “copy and paste this comment if you agree with it”.. only without the emotional blackmail…

So here are five fun facts about me:

1. This award is not the first I have received, having won the school’s annual bean-bag race at Sport’s Day when I was ten years old. This coveted prize consisted of running to fetch four bean bags and returning them to the start, one at a time before my competitors did the same with their bean bags. This, along with the egg-and-spoon, wheelbarrow, three-legged and sack races is what passed for Olympic Training in the UK whilst the rest of the world worked on their reps in the gym. True fact: A variant of this contest is still used to assess the fitness of British Police.

2. I also once received second prize in The Tufty Club for making a model of a hedgehog out of a potato by sticking cocktail sticks in it. The winner was a young Henry Moore’s sculpture of a reclining squirrel made from a hollowed-out avocado which was singled out by the judges as cleverly invoking the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales.

3. Further decorations were awarded to me when my cub scout team won the league without losing a single football match. In our biggest victory of the season we won 24-0, scoring most of our goals in an entertaining second half. In an unfortunate coincidence I was substituted at half time.

4. My first literary award followed my submitting a beautifully descriptive page about gulls and terns whilst on holiday at my grandma’s seaside house to the I-Spy Publications‘ offices. They were sufficiently startled by the fact that anyone had bothered to write to them to send me an I-Spy Award from the Big Chief I-Spy, who appeared to be a Native American living at Wigwam-by-the-Green, on the Edgware Road, which if you know anything about North West London, you will view as a place particularly ill-suited to teepee life. Far too much noise, and little soft ground to bang your tent pegs into.

5. Regular readers will already be familiar with my triumph at the school disco-dancing contest (the same year as the bean bag victory – a vintage year, that one) for which I won my first ever 7″ single. The episode is described in more detail here. In many ways that was the key moment that lead to this wonderful award….and in many ways it wasn’t.

So here are the five blogs that I would like to award the Keative Blogger title to as being the most entertaining blogs that I have read in the last few months. Do check out the winners:

• Frivolous monsters – sublime observations of the mundane laced with British pop culture. I particularly enjoyed an extraordinary recent post about robots…
• Mini seals of approval – I have listened to more records after reading these posts than any other blogger.
• The Byronic Man – consistently sarcastic and popular blog. He has over a thousand followers so I suspect he needs this award like Bono needs a bicycle, but he’s getting it anyway.
• Gary Storm Songs – an eclectic mix of albums spring from this blog written by a former DJ and English teacher – good for checking out the days post and listening to the record on Spotify.
• LP on 45 – a wry and witty blog that also wrote a thoughtful piece about Levon Helm (RIP) which caught my eye.

To the award winners: congratulations, and thank you for keeping me entertained…..you now have a Kreativ Blogger Award, and a place on my Blogroll…