I like to read. I’ve always liked to read, and I read a lot. Even these days, when my brain is tired, and most of the book reading is rereading, I read a lot. Several hours are spent on it every day, and no, I’m not including the reading one does while death-scrolling through social media.

I read sections of several newspapers every day. I read articles from various magazines every day. I read the blogs I follow nearly every day. I also always have a couple of books on the go – I’m currently reading Dune: Messiah on the fiction side. I never bothered with the Frank Herbert series when I was younger, in part because the cover art was so awful.

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but it has an impact regardless.

Not only do I read a lot, I retain much of what I read. It’s a standing ‘joke’ among the people I know that the majority of my stories start with, “I just read an article” or something along those lines. It’s only partly amusing to me, because of course, their ‘humour’ is only partly gently-meant.

l cover a wide range of subjects in my reading because much in the world is an interesting place full of interesting stuff, so the odds are good that regardless of the matter under discussion, I’ve probably got a factoid or two to introduce.

It happened so frequently at university that it earned me my [only] nickname: Clavin.

Norm!

Must-see-television came to NBC in the eighties and nineties, and sitcoms were a big part of that. Seinfeld is remembered as a juggernaut, but that only happened because Thursday night was anchored by one of the most success television shows of all time, Cheers.

Set in Boston, in a bar run by retired baseball player Sam Malone, it centred around his relationships and love life. But there was a good cast of supporting characters running side stories – the two bartenders, Coach and later, Woody; the acerbic Carla, the feisty waitress required in all television and movie venues; Norm, the bar fixture whose weekly entrances and witticism contributed greatly to Cheers success; and Cliff Clavin, the postal worker whose pants were too short, and whose facts were always inaccurate.

That detail we didn’t share – I’m mostly right when it comes to factoids. That’s not bragging – I just tend to hold back if I don’t know. My clothes are also better than Cliff’s. But in the steady supply of “a little know fact” and “not many people know” covering everything from aerospace to Nora Roberts to physics to fashion, the similarities were easy to see. And so, Clavin I became. Not always, but often enough, and especially if someone wanted a piece of information about something being discussed.

I became a kind of let’s ask Mikey for the college set. Let’s ask Clavin – she’ll know.

The nickname didn’t last beyond college, making me a little sad. I moved out of the dorms, and the nickname stayed behind. And while I still get teased about being a “font of generally useless information,” no one has gifted me a label referencing that fact.

Which is a shame. I kind of liked being Claven.

Norm was funny too.

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