It seems awards are a little like buses. Nothing for ages and then three come along at once.

In the last week three wonderful bloggers have nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award. I knew all the yoga and pilates would pay off eventually…

So thank you to Gary at The Greedy Fork, Terri at Terri’s Kitchen and Nicola at Cooknote for adding me to the VBA roll of honour.

The Bangers & Mash blog has only been going three months and I’m just starting to find my feet. So to receive this award was a bit of a surprise. But a very lovely one.

I haven’t won anything for quite a few years. As a child though I was really quite competitive, forever entering some competition or another.

The first competition I remember entering was when I was about five. It was a painting contest at my local youth club and I won first prize. I was so excited to find out that my prize was a voucher but when it arrived a little while later in a small envelope I was absolutely gutted. I had completely misheard you see, and thought my prize was going to be a vulture. Why on earth a five-year-old child would want to win a vulture I really can’t explain but to this day I can still recall that bitter feeling of disappointment.

There you go. A random fact about me. According to the rules of the Versatile Blogger Award I must tell you seven random things about me. So here are six more…

• As a child my favourite TV programme was Blue Peter. Over the years I won four Blue Peter badges.
• I always wanted to be an actress. My first stage role was the Angel Gabriel in my primary school nativity. I was taller than Joseph and therefore denied the role of Mary.
• I studied Drama at Bristol University where I finally got to play Mary in our modernisation of From Creation to Nativity, a medieval Passion play, in which Mary ‘won’ the Baby Jesus as the star prize on a game show hosted by the Angel Gabriel!
• My parents invented my name. Well reinvented it. They liked the name Vanessa and discovered that Jonathon Swift created the name for his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. It was a pseudonym for his ‘squeeze’ Esther Vanhomrigh. My folks decided they preferred the combination of Van and Esther rather than Essa, so that’s how my name came into being. I’m forever having to spell it as you can imagine and most people call me Ness for short.
• I am allergic to kiwi fruit and avocados.
• When I am drunk I can speak fluent German.

Now it’s my turn to pass forward the award to 15 of my favourite bloggers. Ahem. Drum roll please…

Breakfast by the Sea

Curly and Candid

Feeding Boys and a Firefighter

Fishfingers for Tea

Frames of Reference

Gourmet Mum

Jaynerly

Lavendar & Lovage

mythineats

One Man and his Hob

Pea Green Pantry

Red Ted Art’s Blog

Soup Tuesday

The Diary of a Domestic Disappointment

The Little Loaf

Add the award to your blog.

Thank the blogger who gave it to you.

Mention seven random things about yourself.

List the rules.

Award to 15 bloggers.

Inform each of those 15 by leaving a comment on their blog.