5 things you (probably) didn't know about me

Andres tagged me. So now I must tell you all five little-known things about me:

1. I lived with my mother and sister in a hippy commune for six months when I was seven. None of the kids went to school; we just ran wild and did occasional projects with the adults' help, doing stuff like building go-karts or (once) making a "magazine" with a journalist who was passing through.
2. The name "Razzell" is at least as English as it is French: my social demographer father and his brother have traced it back hundreds of years.
3. I sat many 10-day, silent, Vipassana meditation retreats in my twenties. Time does weird things when you don't talk or do anything much for that long. A minute can seem like an hour, then a whole day like a minute when you look back.
4. I won a prize in an international English-Japanese translation competition a few years back, and considered a career in translation.
5. I teach piano to celebrities' and public figures' children. Pupils have included the kids of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sir Tim Bell (head of Lowe Bell PR firm) and the Mascolo Family (Toni and Guy, TiGi Hair etc.).

Well, there you go!