Never joo mind in Hot town, summery in the city - 2017

29.  What is a nervous tic you have and how did you acquire it?

(The title is how some of my Spanish teachers would have pronounced “never you mind”).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a nervous tic. What I do do is absent mindedly mimic people. It’s never meant as a piss-take or a stalker thing, I just do it.

So I will mimic an accent, mannerisms, speech inflections etc… which is why people don’t always realise I’m from Yorkshire. I mean, I left Yorkshire in 1994 but I’ve met people who’ve been gone for longer than that and still have the accent whereas, for me, while I still have bAths in cAstles (as opposed to bARths in cARstles), I mostly have a nondescript accent because I pick bits up here and there.

I had oughta be careful though; my work team mate has one hell of a twitch, I’d better not pick that up!!

However, when I was living in Florida (yes, I crammed a lot into that year), I did get a tic. I was sweeping the tennis court in the back yard (check the photo I put in a previous NoJoMo entry with the photo of the pool, you’ll see the tennis court on the right hand side) and spotted a rotund bug attached to my leg, I flicked it off. It was a couple of years before I discovered that (a) it was a tic and (b) it could have given me Lyme disease!! Thankfully it didn’t! I didn’t name that tic. Perhaps I muttered “fucker” under my breath but I didn’t have the affection for it that I have for Phil.