Challenge accepted!

So I was talking to my friend, the tennis-playin’ surf-ridin’ world explorer Ms Nia Wyn Owen, about our hopes and dreams for the year ahead. I may have mentioned how much I’d love to read a blog about her Australian travels … and she promptly bounced my request back at me.

We both have these blogs, and neither of us have done much with them… and on our own, we are terrible procrastinators. So Nia and I have challenged each other to publish some posts – and whoever has the most interesting blog by the New Year will be declared the winner. Bragging rights are at stake – that’s right, this thing just got serious.

Why not check out her blog now? It’s at http://niawynowen.blogspot.com/

What should I write about? I’m just back from our office Christmas meal. We can be quite a noisy group, particularly during the infamous annual Christmas Quiz, so we reserved the upstairs room at the Ginger Fox near Hurstpierpoint. It’s a cosy little pub in the middle of the countryside with a thatched mansard roof, reminiscent of Milly-Molly-Mandy’s cottage. The food was delicious.

Modesty forbids me from revealing whose team won the quiz (although the aspirational team name, Mr C and the Edge of Glory, may have goaded us on to excel).

As always, though, my pop-culture uncoolness proved faintly embarrassing. In the Never Mind the Buzzcocks-style ‘Next Lines’ round, our quizmistress read out “Funk to funky…”

Of course, the following line should be, “We know Major Tom’s a junkie” from David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes.

However, my cheesetastic mind went straight to Samantha Mumba’s 90s classic Body to Body, with its very similar line “Body to body, funk to funky, we know how to rock your party.”

To music connoisseur and art blogger extraordinaire Mark, this schoolgirl error resulted in 5 minutes of hysterical spluttering. Just you wait, Monsieur Sheerin. Just you wait until you’re called upon to identify a mid-90s cheesy pop B-side. Then you will rue the day!

So hey, Nia, if you’re seeing this in your RSS reader, your mouth open in disbelief that I’ve actually written something … consider the GAUNTLET THROWN DOWN.

Dun – dun – DUNNNNN!