Liebster Award

This Door is Alarmed was nominated by Averyjo624 from Caffeine and Bookmarks. This blog presents a highly capable writer who deftly molds words like music, every piece is a melody, and expertly written.

Guidelines:

On this site, The Rules do not exist. Instead of the R word, we have the easy-going and eternally more satisfying G word: ‘guidelines’. Where the R word ensnares your footsteps, spilling your smiles sideways to cruelly evoke our strict shirt and tie schooldays, guidelines comfort and caress, making compromises alongside necessity.

1. Acknowledge the blog who nominated you.
2. Answer the 11 questions your nominator asked.
3. Nominate 11 other bloggers.
4. Ask them 11 questions.
5. Let them know you have nominated them.

Questions:

1. What is your favorite caffeinated beverage? English breakfast tea, no milk, no sugar. I have to limit myself to one a day or the buzz sends me crooked fuzzy and my thumper catches the drift of a disco beat. The outcome is not pretty…
2. What’s your favorite book? She by Heinreich Rider Haggard. This was the first book I truly fell in love with. This was also the influence for the appellation I chose for the purposes of this blog. It is a whirlwind African adventure set in the Victorian period. This book distilled me with the need to travel. I was enchanted by the exploration, the peoples, the animals, the pure ecstasy of living at its rawest.
3. What’s one experience that has shaped you? I must apologise, as I cannot provide this with one simple answer, as requested, as there are two ways to interpret this question, and therefore at minimum, two answers:

1. One experience that has had an impression on my personality or outlook on life: Travel has been the greatest influence. I am extremely fortunate to have spilled footprints over a great deal of the earth’s surface, to have met many remote and varied peoples and to have seen the ways in which they live. It has changed the way I see hardships in western day-to-day life: they are nothing in comparison to true hardships suffered around the world. These days, I ask myself, ‘will this affect my life in 5 years?’, if the answer is no, it is not worth expending stress over.
2. One experience that has had an impression on my physical shape or outline: my face had a volatile altercation with a street side curb following a bike accident about 4 years ago. I now have a sizeable scar on my head. Thankfully, as my skin is paper white, it matches the scar, so people rarely see it unless they know what they are looking for. My face terrified Amanita (the cat) for about a week.

4. What’s a mantra you live by? Don’t let your dreams outnumber your memories- I just hope I never get dementia, or that’s that up the shoot!
5. How many siblings, if any, do you have? I have a brother.
6. What’s your worst and best habit? Playing with the world that strolls in my head. I have a bad habit of walking out of reality whenever my mind has nothing to stimulate it. On the other hand, the mind is also a pillow room when life turns cross and itchy—a getaway, saviour, and sanctuary.
7. Who’s your celebrity crush? I am sorry, none I can think of. I can entirely evade the question if that helps though, and tell you which celebrity I would like to crush: Nicholas Cage. It is nothing to do with him as a person, but he makes me feel ill, because his mouth scares me. I cannot stop imagining him making spittly blubbering baby noises and spreading spittle in a too-many-mile radius. These noises are all I hear when he speaks. For this reason Nicholas Cage is banned in my house.
8. What’s your greatest insecurity? Dealing with lots of people in social situations. Part of the problem stems in my poor hearing in background noise. When I cannot hear a conversation, and I have already said pardon a few times, I tend to nod positively, smile and say ‘yeah’. Unfortunately, this has led to a graveyard of blunders when I later find out they were speaking about their lovely aunt Poppet who suffered a debilitating stroke, or their darling pet puppy who so sadly found himself caught in the combine harvester. It is a sure combination for a beetroot makeup.
9. If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? These open questions are very difficult and leave me foggy, so for today, I will ban open questions 🙂
10. What’s your #1 goal in life? To be happy and facilitate the happiness of others—and travel.
11. How do you want others to remember you? Someone happy who appreciated the world and never did anything to hurt others.

 

My Questions for Nominees:

1. In your opinion, what is the guiltiest food, and why?
2. What would you think I was referring to if I told you to ‘put it down’?
3. Who is the most interesting person you have met, and what made them so memorable?
4. Would you be a superhero or a sidekick, and what would your name be?
5. If you could remove one letter from the English alphabet, what would it be, and what consequences do you see coming from it?
6. What was the last thing you lost and never found? What do you imagine has happened to it?
7. What significance does the number seven have to you? What memories do you associate with it?
8. Young and completely broke or old and disgustingly rich?
9. If a giant squirrel had commandeered your mode of transportation, whether car, moped, bike etc., and seemed to know how to make it work, what would you do to stop him?
10. If you had your own coat of arms, what would I expect to find on them to describe you/ your family?
11. How straight is straight?

She’s Nominees:

As usual, this is non-obligation, just for fun. If you choose to accept, there is absolutely no time limit for completion.

JBlaide

YuanYang0620

Ward Clever

Nascent Ederren

Futurearenas

Mariyaah

Wideeyedwanderingspoonie

Verobang

Mohit Upadhyay

Novus Lectio

A Guy Called Bloke