A Smiling World Challenge: 10 things about me.

(I’ll keep it short and strange)

Thanks to Veronica Llorca-Smith for setting this challenge. It’s actually pulled me out of a Medium rut and will be my first article in a while.

I’m a short-fiction writer who prides himself on being concise. So I’ll keep my weird facts brief.

Here goes.

10 surprising facts you definitely didn’t know about me — (all 100% true).

1. The first story I wrote (aged 6) featured 1960s singing icon Cliff Richard blowing up a fish & chip shop with a grenade. My teacher was not impressed.

2. As a talented rugby player (aged 10), I was invited to play for the county. At age 38, I’m now involved with international rugby. I watch it while eating family-sized bags of crisps.

3. I hate oranges. This includes orange juice, clementines, tangerines, and mandarins, but not the colour orange.

4. When I lived in Mexico, I adopted an orange cat called Nacho (I’ve always been a cat person). He intensely disliked wearing mariachi hats.

5. I worked as a voice actor on several ESL audiobook recordings in Argentina.

6. I suffer from coulrophobia (the fear of clowns). They are creepy as hell, aren’t they?

7. I’ve visited over 50 countries and have lived in six. None of them start with the letter W.

8. After learning Italian for two years, I studied in Venice for a semester. My attempts to order coffees resulted in receiving a glass of milk, the police being called and simply being told ‘NO!’ (3 separate occasions).

9. I have two middle names and they are both secret.

10. I took drama classes as a teenager, but I am NOT Hollywood C-lister Matty Cardarople (look him up).

Thanks for reading. Feel free to ask me to expand on any of my brief facts.

And keep smiling.

First published on LinkedIn

Philip Charter is a writing coach from the UK who works with multilingual copywriters and founders. He is the author of two collections of short fiction and Fifteen Brief Moments in Time, a novella-in-flash. He likes crisps.