A thank you to all volunteers.

For those of you accessing my blog for the first time - welcome.

I hope you gain something useful from the next month and enjoy the experience.

If this is your first time here I'd advise looking through some of my older blog posts. It'll give you some idea of the range of things I tend to write about, although for the next month I will be including more academic postings too.

In the spirit of sharing and to kick off the project, here's 5 things about me that you don't know:

1. My favourite book ever is Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.

2. When I was 14 years old the BBC came to film Doctor Who in our street. It remains, despite being married and having children, the happiest day of my life. The wholly unremarkable 35 second clip of the corner of my street (I was being forcibly held behind the camera by an assistant director at the time) is viewable here between 4 minutes and 35 seconds and 5 minutes and 10 seconds.

3. I was picked out of the audience by The League of Gentlemen to go on stage as a stooge at their Oxford  Apollo gig in 1999. And it was my birthday. A flavour of what I had to do is available via YouTube on request but be warned it's very rude!

4. I've yet to get to the end of Finding Nemo without crying my eyes out.
 And unfortunately for me it's one of my boys' favourite films.

5. I think all spiders are the embodiment of evil.

Alan