I was tagged a while ago by Loth of "The Gym isn't Working" for 8 random facts about myself. I apologise in advance for the mundane nature of my life – I was similarly tagged some months ago and probably have nothing interesting left to say. However, I won’t let that stop me… .
1. I really enjoy Anne Tyler’s novels – some of her earlier ones are uncomfortably dark, but I particularly love "A Patchwork Planet" and "An Amateur Marriage".
2. When I was a girl, my family had a cat called Dido. She was a stray and just moved in on us when she was maybe six months old and I was 15. She was lovely – white with a black patch between her ears. My school uniform was navy blue – and constantly covered in white fluff. She stayed on in my parents’ house when I married and moved out and lived till she was about 15.
(Why did I waste my youth worrying that I was fat? And that was really quite a short skirt, wasn't it? - but it was the fashion at the time - about 1969, I think. I was 19.)
3. Continuing the theme of being 15, I’ve kept a diary since I was 15. I don’t write in it every day by any means – sometimes several weeks pass without an entry – but it’s continuous, and thus occupies quite a lot of hardback notebooks. I have no idea why I do it but I can’t stop. I hardly ever read past volumes, though there has been the odd occasion (not for years) when I’ve read from the beginning. It’s quite salutary to see how silly I sometimes was when I was 15. I thought I was quite sensible at the time and I think others probably thought so too. As I get older, I wonder what will happen to it when I die. Sometimes I contemplate a big bonfire. It interests me to ask myself whom I think I’m writing for. In the past, I just wrote what I thought, but of recent years I’ve probably written with a bit more circumspection, since it now begins to seem possible that I might some day actually die and it might outlive me.
4. I’m very phobic about blood.
5. I’m not very keen on piercings either. Even pierced ears, if the hole is visible. Especially ears with big stretched holes and heavy earrings hanging from them. Shudder.
6. We’ve recently had our bedroom redecorated and our new bedspread is red velvet. (How odd to be telling the world this. Fortunately, not much of the world is paying attention.) I made the cushion myself… no, you spotted the lie, did you? I bought it in Marks and Spencer. But I’d like to have made it. I don't know why it looks as if our bedroom slopes. It doesn't really.
7. My grandfather was shot in the hand at Gallipoli and his right forefinger was bent down towards his palm for the rest of his life. Did I ask him what Gallipoli was like? And why not?
8. On December 18, it will be 40 years since I took Mr Life to my final year school Christmas dance (I went to a girls’ school), which was the start of our relationship. I didn’t quite realise the momentousness of this event, but it seems to have worked out well.
I know many of you have done this already but if WifeMomChocaholic of "Nearly a Normal Eater" and Beakus of "This is Me" (or anyone else) would like to pick up the baton, this would be fine.
I love Old Black's comment (a male reader! - most rare) on my previous post:
The four people on the right, Old Black, are our two daughters, our son and our son-in-law, sitting on garden chairs in obedience to their mother/in-law, who wanted a photo of them. We were in the garden of a house-swap holiday house in Malmo (imagine two dots above the "o", please) in Sweden at the time. The picture is now a bit faded, having been exposed to the blazing Scottish sun in our kitchen for a few years.
