Tag Thursday – the 30 Interesting Questions Tag

Jamieson from Jamishelves tagged me in this a few weeks ago and I had so much fun completing these – it became a little like therapy so I apologise for the rants at some sections! If you want to check out Jamieson’s questions you can find them here

1. What are your nicknames? What do you prefer to be called?

I don’t really have any nicknames, Sarah doesn’t really lend itself to shortening… At school I was sometimes called Swithers – my friends called my younger brother Mini Swithers if we ever passed him… My close friends also sometimes refer to me as Darth Withers, that’s my name in the Facebook messenger group chat…

2. How often do you doodle? What do your doodles look like?

Rarely, I’m not artistic at all so if I doodle it tends to be some sort of geometric pattern…

3. What do you do if you can’t sleep at night? Do you count sheep? Toss and turn? Try to get up and do something productive?

I usually pick up my iPad and read some fanfiction, or check the BBC News app, I’m sure it’s hugely counterproductive as I’m pretty sure the type of light given off by an iPad is meant to disrupt sleep patterns…

4. Do people consider you to be talkative or quiet?

Both! I can be quite quiet in certain situations but put me with a group of close friends and we can talk for hours!

5. What makes you cry?

Not that much to be honest, usually it’s when some emotion has taken me by surprise and I’m not prepared for it. For example last Remembrance Day I watched the parade through my local town and remembered when I was a brownie and marched in my hometown’s parade and my granddad also took part as a Second World War veteran, it’s been a good few years since he died now but it suddenly hit me at that parade and I shed a tear or two…

6. What is your biggest pet peeve?

People who don’t know how to use escalators! I commute into Edinburgh daily, and every morning I have to head up Waverley Steps from the station to get a bus. If the train is on time and I’m quick I can make it up to Princes Street and jump on the early bus, otherwise I have to wait ten minutes for the next, and at ten to seven that’s not fun! To make it up a little bit faster I tend to walk up the escalator and nothing annoys me more than people who stand side by side and block the whole thing. Is standing on the right hand side not a thing everywhere? Is it just that I spend a lot of time in London when I was growing up and it’s well publicised that that’s what you do on the tube?…

7. How many times a day do you look at yourself in the mirror?

Very rarely! Usually just after I’ve finished getting dressed to make sure my hair looks okay pulled back, I’ve not got anything on my face and my clothes are looking how they’re supposed to and I’ve not got anything tucked where it shouldn’t be before I head out to work… Other than that the odd glance in the mirror if I go to the bathroom at work… I don’t wear make up really so there’s not much to check!

8. What is the strangest thing you believed as a child?

I’m not sure I really believed many strange things as I child – certainly not that I can remember… I do remember visiting a few old churches when I was younger and hating having to walk over the ledger stones embedded in the aisles, y’know the ones that mark a crypt beneath them. I used to be paranoid that a hand would reach up and grab my ankle…

9. What is the guilty pleasure you enjoy too much to give up?

Trashy ‘reality’ tv… please don’t take my Teen Mom or Vanderpump Rules away from me…

10. Who performs the most random acts of kindness out of everyone you know?

I genuinely have no idea… Amy from Golden Books Girl will ALWAYS have something kind to say when you need a bit of a boost!

11. How often do you read the newspaper? Which sections?

I’m not a big newspaper reader. I’ll occasionally pick up a Metro on the way to work but I mainly get my news from the BBC news app… I’ll flick through it every morning, and then I’ll pop onto the website during my lunch break… I tend to look at the most read story list and then move onto the Scotland pages… I also check out the football news and will have a quick read of Digital Spy and TV Line for entertainment news…

12. Which animal scares you the most?

I’m not sure to be honest – I’m not really scared of anything like sharks because it’s highly unlikely I’m ever going to be in a position where I come face to face with one unless there’s a lot of glass between us in an aquarium… I don’t like geese though and I vividly remember standing on a picnic table refusing to get down when I was maybe 5 or 6 when my dad thought it would be fun to throw some crusts on the ground after our picnic and they all came running honking towards us…

13. Are you more likely to avoid conflict or engage with it?

Umm if it’s something aimed at me I’m probably more likely to walk away. When I was younger and went out to clubs etc I was usually the one keeping the peace, when a friend had a few too many drinks and managed to ‘whisper’ loudly enough for everyone to hear her, usually including the person she was talking about. Say something bad about someone I care about on the other hand and I’m far more likely to tell you what I think… I don’t think I’d ever get physical, but I won’t be afraid to tell you what I think…

14. What is the most recent compliment you’ve received?

At the time of writing several people congratulated me on my promotion, that counts right…

15. What question are you tired of hearing?

“Yeah, but where are you actually from?” After responding to the question where are you from? With the answer England, or Devon/a town called Exmouth depending on how specific I’ve been. Yes, I get it I’m mixed race, I clearly have brown skin, I’m still English, my paternal grandparents moved from the Caribbean in the 1950s… I’m British – can’t even claim dual citizenship…

16. What is the strangest thing you have eaten?

I don’t think I’ve really eaten anything I’d class as strange… I’ve had curried goat, maybe you’d class that as strange but it’s pretty standard fare in parts of the Caribbean…

17. Do you have a whole lot of acquaintances or just a few very close friends?

Both! I have a lot of acquaintances and I get on well with a lot of my colleagues at work, but there’s definitely a small group of people I consider my very close friends.

18. Do you have a catchphrase?

Nope… Although if you were to sit behind me in my office you’d probably hear me mutter ‘oh for f*cks sake’ on a fairly regular basis when I get yet another email in with a question that they would have answered for themselves if they had just read my original email properly

19. What’s your all-time favourite town or city? Why?

I spent some time in New York and absolutely loved it, Bridgetown Barbados will always be special to me, as is my hometown Exmouth… but Dundee is where my goddaughter is so that might just win…

20. If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to?

I’m not sure, apparently my dad wanted to call me Stephanie but my mum pulled the Labour card and got her choice… I always wished they’d been a little more adventurous though rather than giving me what was the most popular girls name in Britain the year I was born. Maybe I’d pick Suri, which is the Yiddish form of Sarah (I think) so I’d still be a princess…

21. When was the last time you lied?

Over something important? I can’t remember… I’ve probably said oh yes that’s lovely about something that really wasn’t recently…

22. What’s something that amazes you?

An author’s creativity… I know this sounds cheesey from a book blogger but as someone who isn’t particularly creative they way these people can magic up whole new worlds amazes me

23. Would you rather be the first person to explore a planet or be the inventor of a drug that cures a deadly disease?

Inventor of a drug, when I was younger I seriously thought about going into medicine – I wanted to be a surgeon, so creating a new drug would be my choice

24. What is your favourite amateur activity?

I do like to bake… the office regularly benefits from cupcakes after I’ve been bored the night before…

25. What was your first thought when you got up this morning?

On the morning I’m actually writing this, not the morning I’m posting… ‘Ugh I’ve got to get the train to Glasgow…’

26. What is your favourite song (at least at the moment)?

On Fire by Raleigh Ritchie. It was used as the background music for a video montage on Match Of The Day when Man City won the league this season. I’m a City fan and I’ve loved this song ever since

27. List someone you know and describe them in five words.

Charlotte from Charlotte, Somewhere

Dragon Queen
Amazing Mum
Incredible Friend
Recommender Of Wonderful Books
Drinker of Gin

Not five words true… but these are five titles I bestow on her!

28. You can select one person from history and have them truthfully answer one question. Who would you select and what would the question be?

Just one person… I don’t know, I’d love to sit down and chat with some of people from the civil rights movement – people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. And some of the lesser known people but I don’t think I’d have just one question for them…

29. Which celebrity or artist do you resemble the most?

I think this has to be Mel B, my hair has been fairly long over the years and the weight has pulled some of the curls down over the years but when the Spice Girls first broke into the music scene I was about nine and had the big hair to match! 

30. What do you want me to know?

I am a complete MG convert! Not that I’ve ever not liked them but I’ve read quite a few recently and I cannot get enough!

30 answers to 30 questions! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them! I’ve stolen Jamieson’s idea and I’m tagging people from the top of my reader no pressure on any of you to actually complete it…
Charlotte, Amy, Jordyn, Liz and Heidi.

I’ll be back next Thursday with the next letter in the ABC book challenge!