1. When I was born I weighed just five pounds.

2. I believe that this explains a lot.

3. (Think about the underdeveloped state of my poor little brain.)

4. When my sister was born, it snowed so heavily that my father had to get out and push the ambulance in which my mother was being taken to hospital.

5. I went to a total of five schools in thirteen years.

6. I need constant variety.

7. I didn't get drunk until I was eighteen.

8. I did a lot of catching up after that.

9. My mother's family are from West Cork in Ireland. Her maiden name is so common there that it can be seen above every other shop and pub door.

10. Consequently, people in her family are known by their first, second and sometimes third names. "Ah, your great-aunt is Mary Siobhan Claire who got married to John Declan Michael Alan Paul. Sure'n I'm your sixty-fourth cousin eight times removed."

11. I detest the heat with such a passion that I have a secret desire to move to Alaska.

12. I have had exactly fifteen minutes of fame.

13. I'm a selective teen soap junkie. I adored Beverly Hills: 90210. Nowadays I can't live without an occasional dose of Dawson's Creek. I know, I know.

14. I started work on my first novel when I was nine. It was about cats who lived in the clouds. It has not yet been accepted for publication.

15. I'm destined to be an unrecognised genius and die in poverty in a box under the Thames, babbling about how I should have made it big in Literature. Dammit.

16. I've met five politicians and written to eleven.

17. I'd only heard of two of them beforehand.

18. In my room at the moment I have a stash of cherry bakewell cakes, grapefruit pop and vodka.

19. I am ethically opposed to owning more than eight pairs of shoes.

20. When I pass that level, a pair has to go to a charity shop. It's necessary.

21. I believe in conspiracy theories. All of them.

22. I am not an entirely rational person.

23. Everything I ever needed to know I learned on a psychiatric ward, from the works of Sylvia Plath, or out of a grammar reference book.

24. I'm the least interesting crazy person I know.

25. I am well-known in Christian circles as a bit of a heretic.

26. Whatever happened to burning at the stake?

27. There is a statistical probability of 75% that I will leave one of my belongings wherever I go. Somewhere in the Great Lost Property Office in the Sky there is an enormous box marked Seska's.

28. I budget for four new umbrellas a year.

29. I hated Lord of the Rings the trilogy of novels, not the movie. The plot was really very good.. I hated it to the very core of my being. That is not how a novel is written.

30. Everyone and his sixty-fourth cousin eight times removed knows fact #24 about me, but this may be my only chance to get it out of my system in a forum where no one can shout at me for holding this opinion. Lord of the Rings! Not how a novel should be written!!

31. I've never been on a proper date. Last month didn't count.

32. I wrote my master's dissertation on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

33. I also wrote about some other books, but I like telling people the above and watching their expressions change. There is a pattern: the phrase master's degree inspires an expression of congratulations until it is directly followed by the title of the aforementioned work of children's fiction. At which point the expression transubstantiates into one suggesting great pity, repressed hilarity or utter bemusement. It's fun to watch.

34. I've been an Anglican, a Pentacostal, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, an Evangelical, a Post-Evangelical, a fundamentalist, a moderate, a liberal, a socialist and a pianist.

35. Not all at once.

36. I confuse my students.

37. I played a tree in a church pantomime, two years running.

38. Trees are moody and have tantrums. I understand this now.

39. I have no memory.

40. I could repeat #33 several times, but it's been done before and would not be funny.

41. I have no memory.

42. This week, I lost my ankle.

43. I want to get married in black.

44. I am not a goth. I just want to cause distress to my parents. Nothing serious, just mild discomfort and possibly a little bit of worry.

45. I have seen only a few select films during my admittedly quite short, though lengthening as we speak life. This leads to problems, such as not being able to put names to movie stars' faces, and not caring who the hell certain celebrities are. Do they affect my life in any positive or meaningful way? Then I don't care.

46. I am extremely uncultured. I do, however, know enough random facts about a few different areas of 'culture' to be able to pretend I know about stuff. Sometimes, however, it all goes horribly wrong. "Have you read much Eastern European litearture?" "Not as much as I should have done, certainly. I do appreciate Tolstoy, however." "Ah, Tolstoy. What, in your opinion, is the dominant symbolic mode in War and Peace?"

47. I have not read War and Peace.

48. In my immediate family there are two manic depressives and two psychologists. There's a connection there somewhere.

49. I want to teach in a prison.

50. Occasionally I seem to have something of a death wish.

51. I'm not really shy. It's all a ruse so as to pretend that I'm normal. If you too are crazy, why not try it?

52. I just went downstairs to get something, forgot what it was I wanted, stood in the kitchen for fifteen minutes trying to remember, came back upstairs, stood in exactly the spot I was standing in when I thought of what it was that I wanted, finally remembered what it was I needed and went back downstairs to get it. I am 25. Something is wrong there.

53. I have no memory.

54. The universe continually conspires to prevent me from watching Sex and the City. Maybe it's because I'm too innocent.

55. The innocence is a ruse too, by the way.

56. I own two hundred and forty books, last count. And I want more.

57. I cannot work without deadlines. Some of my best lessons were planned at four in the morning for a class that started at nine.

58. Would I let my students get away with that in their coursework? Please.

59. I have seen seven counsellors and nine psychiatrists. Fortunately not all at once. We're only at number 52 and I'm running out of ideas. Can you tell?

60. Yesterday I dyed my hair a very dark red colour. Once I'd cleaned up the bathroom that looked like I'd killed someone in it, there were little red splodges all over my (rented) bedroom.

61. I'm going to have to get creative with stain remover now.

62. Still, I have good hair.

63. It's really hard to think of more than 59 things that are unusual about me. I mean, I'm just not that interesting. Could I be excused from the next twenty or so because I am boring?

64. Ooh, I've got another one! I love airports. I used to hang out in them and watch planes take off. It never got quite as bad as planespotting, fortunately for me, my social life and the Greek government.

65. I have a small collection of really bad poems from when I was a teenager. I'm sure most people do - but these are really bad.

66. No, you cannot see examples.

67. I have a desk fan... I'm pushing the boat out here.

68. OK. That's it. I'm a teacher. I work between fifty and sixty hours a week. I have more important things to do than think of a hundred interesting things about myself when I'm a very boring person.

69. And for that matter, so do you. What are you doing reading this crap? Go and do something productive. Campaign for trade justice. Go swimming. Talk to your friends. Watch the fucking television. I don't care.

70. Right. Claris has told me that I have to carry on writing No Matter What. In fear of her I continue, but I would like to protest that she is making me write crap against my will. Freedom for those who do not want to complete 100 facts about themselves!

71. Furthermore, she is to blame for the crap I write from here on.

72. The earlier crap is mainly my own fault.

73. I have nightmares about American conservative Christians, hospital wards and tall buildings.

74. My pot plant is called Errol.

75. Previous pot plants have been called Herbert and Giles.

76. My idea of fun is a big book on linguistics.

77. I have seen Stand By Me fifteen times.

78. I have never seen The Sound of Music, Casablanca or Thelma and Louise. Sorry.

79. This list is going to get VERY boring from here on.

80. I did laundry yesterday.

81. Here's a good story. When I was little, I used to pray for a budgie. I really really wanted one but my parents wanted me to wait til I was older, or something. So I prayed for one. And one day, guess what turned up on our garden wall? *g* We never did find the original owner, though we tried.

82. This is getting really tortuous.

83. I like raw carrots.

84. My father has written two books and is working on another one.

85. How boring am I?

86. Don't answer that.

87. Please.

88. This evening there was a power cut across London and I was stuck on a platform waiting for a train for rather a long time. I went into Blitz Mode and started talking excitedly to a short woman standing next to me about how important the Wimbledon train was to me. Then she went away.

89. When I retire I want seven cats.

90. And a pot plant named Joan.

91. I now have managed to think of 90 incredibly dull things about myself. My creative powers know no bounds.

92. Did I mention that I'm a dull, dull, dull person?

93. Oh my fucking word. I'm going to fly to America, hunt Claris down and hit her over the head with a saucepan for making me do this.

94. Yeah, so I got to 94 and gave up. Fuck off.