Chris Winchester (amended)

25 things about me | 25 things they said about me | 25 things I like

1. I am a UK-born New Zealand Permanent Resident, living at the bottom of the Kapiti Coast, to the north of Wellington. I grew up in Liverpool, grew bored in Cambridge, and grew increasingly rancid in London due to poor refrigeration. Then I grew wings.
2. For the last couple of years I've had greatly reduced work capacity due to a -- to put it really, really mildly -- very irritating chronic fatigue condition. But I am now in the recovery phase -- hooray -- and medically certified "50% capable". Of what has yet to be established.
3. I am working on an enhanced pitch for a cartoon series about a gang of exploding superhero honeybees, called Kaboombee! with a view to presenting at the Annecy International Animation Festival in 2012. Please like us on facebook, and spread us about with the sharey button, and stuff like that. I'm also developing a picture book for younger kids, and a series of fantasy stories for slightly older kids. I want to make friends with more illustrators and publishers involved in children's fiction. Is that you? It is, isn't it? If so, please say hello. If not, please say hello anyway.
4. I dabble in making music of various kinds. And other stuff. I've never really been able to draw though, which has always bugged me for some reason. All the more reason to make friends with lots of illustrators. (And publishers too. Did I mention publishers? Not that not being able to draw has anything whatsoever to do with making friends with publishers.)
5. You can follow me on twitter @whimsyverse if you like. In a slightly different, and at times considerably ruder incarnation I'm also christophergraeme on facebook. You can view my public profile on LinkedIn here:
   http://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswinchester
6. The best email address to get to me at is chris[AT]kaboombee.com -- but I've been a bit crap at checking my inbox of late, despite having a swanky phoney thing that's supposed to do that for me. I'm on facebook A LOT though. Oh dear.
7. To -- politely I hope -- elbow my way into NZ, I indulged in a bit of a last-minute personal marketing campaign, with the invaluable assitance of a snowman-photographer.
8. I look after four guinea pigs, and find it very difficult to eat breakfast if I think they might be hungry. They live in an enormous multi-level hutch, and squeak rather endearingly. I am considering renaming them giggly pigs.
9. Many years ago, after graduating in Computer Science from a Prodigious University, I took a newspaper journalism qualification at an Unheardof College. It made me briefly admire people who work for The Sun. I am so, so sorry.
10. I consider myself part-creative, part-geek. The percentages vary with the moon. Currently the geek is in wane and the creative is in wax. Which might explain why I've been burning the candle at both ends. Ho ho.
11. There have been times when I've done Technical Things to websites. There have also been times when I've mucked about a lot in Photoshop, and written Really Bad Poetry. But I am good at doing puns. And no, I'm not going to do any now, because I'm feeling self-conscious.
12. The previous "Thing 12" was really, really dull, so I've deleted it. You can spend the next few seconds of your valuable life wondering what it might have been. And then, I sincerely hope, you can move on.
13. I worked on one quite large website for seven years, doing bits of everything websitey, but mainly drinking a lot of tea. It may simply be coincidence, but seven years is also the length of time kidnapped souls have to spend in fairyland.
14. The previous "Thing 14" was also really, really dull. Good grief. And I thought I was half way decent at writing selling copy. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.
15. I am a movie extra in The Hobbit! (Way cool.)
16. I used to write topical "haiku" (technically not haiku, but that's another story) for Guardian Unlimited's daily competition. (It was called the "topical haiku competition".) I won the weekly prize on several occasions. Wooaaah, Momma. You can still see some of my entries -- rendered in antique HTML -- at http://christophergraeme.com/haiku -- and some of them are even OK.
17. I devised the concept for the garden-sharing project swopaplot (now sadly missing its stylesheets and domain name -- poor love), which I've been very happy to hand over to the River Cottage Land Share team. Land Share has become HUGE!!
18. This one was dull too. I have moments when I am desperately dull. Thank goodness the Internet lets me pretend they didn't happen.
19. I used a masturbatory exclamation mark in the original "Thing 19". It was hooorrendously self indulgent, so I have tossed it. I hope I am growing out of such self-abusive punctuation. I do however adore m-dashes, split infinitives, and the Oxford Comma. (Although the latter feels rather like treason.)
20. My favourite F-words are fun, friendship, flexibility, fairness, family, and faith in the future. Isn't that fab? I like other F-words too, but generally not when I'm writing stories for children.
21. Before you were born -- if you were born after August 1994 -- I co-wrote and performed in a little comedy show for three weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe. This resulted in the following two reviews:
    "I have to say they're absolutely brilliant."
    and:
    "The sooner these boys throw away their guitars and get themselves a decent scriptwriter the better."
    I still have a copy of the former, but for some reason I mislaid the latter. Which I think is a shame.
22. Years ago I did a course in 16mm filmmaking. We made three Really Really Bad Films. Bloody awful. I mean really, really bad.
23. OH GOD THIS ONE WAS DULL. I wrote a list in "Thing 23". Somebody shoot me now. I wrote a list. Lists are the rabbipoos of Satans Beelzebunnies.
    Um, er, hold on. But this whole page is a list. It appears that I can be a bit condradictory.
24. I sometimes drive a Subaru Forester Turbo. This crazypaves my polished green facade. Bugger. But, VROOOM! VROOOM!
25. Here are 25 things other people have said about me. (Under duress.)