6 ways in which you're unusual/things that might surprise people about you

First topic message reminder :

Not sure this quite fits as a 'favourites' topic, but since the '6 things you've never done' thread isn't really one either, I'll put it here and hope for the best! I enjoyed reading that thread just now, but knowing what people haven't done tells you more about what they're not than what they are, I guess. So I thought knowing 6 positive things about each other might be a good idea - things that are unusual or might otherwise surprise people to know about you.

So here are mine:

1) I speak 5 languages and can get by in others
2) I've been to 54 countries so far
3) I've had malaria (the palcifarum type)
4) My wife and kids only semi-jokingly ask if I'm a spy
5) I've eaten snake, rat and brain
6) I left Kinshasa just before fighting broke out there, Beirut just before Israel bombed the airport, Tunis just before the 'Arab Spring' and Damascus just before the Syrian uprising

Look forward to others' contributions!

I'll start with some quiet wheelies

Best way love build yourself up slowly, then hey you are off!!

Golly, if I had known no-one had posted on here for the best part a year I wouldn't have compiled a list whilst I was reading through everyone else's (that'll teach me to check the time of the last post!).  Oh well, it's done now so here it is:

I have climbed a (rock) chimney and been abseiling
I love decorating
I spent a day and a half in the Rijksmusea and never got to the end of it
I've eaten a slice of the World's Largest Pie
I heard my nan call out to me (I was asleep, she was dead) at the exact moment a friend drove himself over a cliff (morbid but it was the ghost stories that prompted that one)
I talk to inanimate objects (usually to tell them off for not being where they were left or for moving when they are supposed to stand still - but not always )

I first worked for the Labour Party when I was fourteen, bringing five schoolfriends with me. I used to speak Chinese (National Language) rather well. My Father was a clergyman close to the CP. A lot of my relatives live in Patagonia and speak only Spanish. I've published a fair bit of poetry. My phone used to be tapped, and sometimes sympathisers would play back my conversations so that I knew. I spend time in hospital with Stuart's problem and was once introduced as 'our most patient patient!' When I was in the RAF I turned down Aircrew. I once went to a George Brown meeting where he was sober and I was not! I believe Shirley Williams is responsible for almost all that is now wrong with Britain, out of sheer vanity.

Today, I received a birthday card urging me to 'live like someone left the gate open'

Following the example of my two terriers, this is what I have done - now off to bed - this post has taken two hours xx - good night all

Tomorrow I will be ordinary again - thank goodness