chickenfeet

1. Gum chewing: No. I equate it with wearing a baseball cap backwards (or indeed at all)

2. Knife: I know which utensil or none to use for which foods in a variety of cuisines. I can eat like a civilised English person but it would strike me as bizarre to eat Indian food that way. Eating Thai food with chopsticks is even more bizarre (unless it's noodles from a street vendor).

3. Sports: Rugby (union, need you ask?), cricket. When younger, I did a lot of climbing and mountaineering and a fair bit of skiing.

4. Radio: BBC3 or 4; mostly via the internet these days. (ETA: I've appeared on BBC Radio Newcastle and Sud Deutsche Rundfunk)

5. Hygiene: Somewhat obsessive. I bathe every morning, sometimes at night and always shower or bathe after exercise.

6. Drink: Yes. Almost anything. Gin (usually pink) or sherry (very dry) before dinner, wine with, whisk(e)y later. Beer, usually a microbrew, when I feel like it.

7. Restroom/napkin/couch: Bog, napkin, couch

8. Room the sofa goes in: living room

9. Groceries: A real mix here. Most are bought daily or nearly so from appropriate specialists at the St. Lawrence Market. Canned goods,rice, dry pasta etc come either from Loblaws or the T&T (large Asian market). Fish too often comes from the T&T.

10. Name: My first name is ludicrously common and is probably possessed in various forms by at least 10% of the Christian population of the world. My family name is somewhat rare and has a most curious distribution, at least in Canada, owing to there being two 'clans', not related and having quite different migration patterns.

11. Socks: Plain black, except for sports. Shoes ditto, at leastfor anything involving work and not involving shooting small birds.

12. Midday meal: Lunch (or maybe brunch on Sunday)

13. Dogs: I'm a cat person but you knew that. If I had a dog, which I would only do if I lived in the country with access to lots of open space, it would be a labrador or possibly a golden retriever.

14. TV: We do have a home theatre set up but it's not connected to cable or any other conventional feed. We use it for movies, opera, favourite shows like Blackadder and the odd rugby game downloaded via torrent. (ETA I've appeared on CBC Newsworld, Rogers Cable 10 in the GTA and a local channel in Batimore).

15. Holiday: I like the idea of holidays but my travel urge was pretty badly dented by a dozen years of heavy business travel. Also, I miss the cats. Holidays I've enjoyed in recent years have ranged from backpacking down the Olympic Coast of WA to bumming around Thailand by bus and train to taking a cottage on the cliff top in the far west of Cornwall.

16. School: A not very grand public school (scholarship) followed by Durham.

17. Asking for clarification: Informally; grunt, what?, do what now?. Formally/professionally. "Let's see if I'm getting this right. You are arguing/saying $very_careful_restatement_of_other's_view_in_more_straightforward_language_eliminating_any_and_all_corporate_bafflegab?"

18. Newspaper: I rarely read a paper version. News comes from a variety of websites, principally the BBC, the Guardian and The Globe and Mail. Crosswords come from The Guardian.