Being at a bit of a loose end, and with any inspiration for subject matter over at my other blog suffering extreme drought conditions, I thought I would, for the first time, play along with Cee’s Share Your World weekly challenge, in which I get to answer a few questions that go a little way to lifting the veil on the enigma that is theonlyD800inthehameau.

What’s your most memorable airline flight?

I used to travel a huge amount when I was working. My record annual total was 168 individual flights in a single year. This was during the period when, as I used to explain it, I ‘lived in Scotland but worked in London for an American investment bank, covering companies in Europe and Australia’. So yes, I got around a bit.

Understandably, I have no recollection of most of the what must be well over 2,000 separate sectors that I’ve flown. One I’ll never forget, though, was  a  short hop in a small commuter plane from Lansing, Michigan (yes, really) into Chicago O’Hare.

This was entirely uneventful until we started our final approach, when suddenly the aircraft dropped sharply, jumperd back up and yawed wildly from side to side, as if a curious giant had picked it up and shaken it.

After we managed to land and change our underwear, the pilot explained that directly ahead of us in the queue had been a 747 and we had caught the full blast of its backdraught.

And that’s the only time I was ever in Lansing.

How many bones, if any, have you broken?

Just the one, and that was a humdrum greenstick fracture of the bottom joint of my right index finger.

This happened when I was about 15, and I feel rather sheepish in explaining that the damage was self-inflicted when I tapped my knuckles on the exceedingly thick skull of an exceptionally irritating boy a couple of years younger.

In a blatant breach of the Trade Descriptions Act, his name was Noble (can’t remember his first name: we didn’t go in for such familiarity at my school). Still, I got to wear a small cast for a couple of weeks. Nobody signed it, though.

If you had your own talk show, who would your first three guests be?

Oscar Wilde: for matchless wit and aphoristic wisdom.

William Shakespeare: so, Will, about this Dark Lady…

Jerry Garcia: erudite guitar genius. Who maybe I could persuade to perform ‘Stella Blue’ to close the show.

Make a Currently List. What are you reading, watching, listening to, eating, needing, wanting and missing right now?

Reading: ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’.

For the past year or so, I’ve been working my way through The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books in the English language, or at least the ones I haven’t read before (about half of the total). In the process, I’ve trudged through some proper dross (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) but also found some gems: ‘Sybil’ by Benjamin Disraeli and, most recently and best of all, Somerset Maugham’s ‘Of Human Bondage’

As for Harper Lee, I’m less than halfway, so I suppose you could say (spoiler alert) the jury’s still out.

Watching: Euro 2016. Because it’s football.

Listening To: at this precise moment, family conversation. Although the current ‘project’ is 1977 Grateful Dead.

Eating: Just had a couple of plain chocolate digestives with a cup of Earl Grey. Marvellous.

Needing: Inspiration. As you may have gathered.

Wanting: ditto.

Missing: My own bed. We’re currently visiting relatives in the UK, which is lovely, but it’s not a patch on this:

Bonus question. What are you grateful for from last week and what are you looking forward to in the week comng up?

Waking up in the morning. When you get to my age….