Spitting Yarn

1. I am a creature of the Sciences and the Arts. I was always hard pushed to choose between, say, Biology of Disease or The Metaphysical Poets at school.

2.  I am shortly to become a mum.  I am very excited to meet our little one!

3. I am an only child, and so is my DB, and neither of us are spoiled brats, insofar as I can be objective about such matters.

4. I am a homebody. I am interested in other places and cultures, and would like to spend a short amount of time living Somewhere Else, but I couldn’t imagine moving permanently from the UK, or the south-east, for that matter.

5. I don’t drink enough water, or liquid in general. How am I not a shrivelled husk?

6. I used to be an intellectual property lawyer specialising in patent litigation. This meant I didn’t get to knit as much as I would like.  So I resigned and retrained as an interior designer.

7. I met my DB when he invited me, a stranger, to a performance of a play that he had written, by email. After we had been together for 6 months we realised we had previously met at a friend’s birthday party.

8. I passed my driving test on the 4th attempt.

9. I wanted to be a doctor for the longest time, and then I decided I didn’t want to be one after all. I hope I don’t regret the about-face. I don’t think I will.

10. I have the best mum you could wish for. She just gets better and better.

11. My dad appears on p222 of the 1989 Guinness Book of Records. Guess what for?

12. I had speech therapy when I was smaller and the last word I remember having difficulty with was “squirrel”, which I pronounced “squewrol”, or something like that.

13. I have a soft spot for rough old men’s pubs in the north east of England.

14. My favourite first line from a book is “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” Or maybe it’s “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Perhaps it’s the colons which are important?

15. I used to think “St Michael” was the patron saint of shops (this will only mean anything to UK Marks & Spencer shoppers!).

16. I had a cleft of the soft palate when I was born, which means I’ve had a lot of work done on my ears and teeth. I still don’t hear very well.

17. I like doing things with my hands, whether it’s knitting or assembling an Ikea kit.

18. I don’t really like following instructions. I’m a great one for “seeing if I can work it out”. How I manage to progress with knitting, assembling the aforementioned Ikea kits, or passing the tens of exams I have passed, I really don’t know.

19. I like green an unnatural amount. I have to restrain myself from dressing like a tree, and from buying inordinate amounts of green yarn.

20. My best friend is a film producer who suffers from bad luck, but a positive spirit.

21. I love medical television programs, be they comedy, drama, documentary or reality. This probably has something to do with nos 9 and 16 above.

22. About 70% of the comments from friends in my secondary school (I think that’s High School, in the States) leaving book mentioned my hair. It is long, blonde and big! I chopped it off to a crop at University and people walked past me in the corridor without recognising me. So I grew it again. It’s now long, blonde and big once more.

23. I have an appalling memory. I’m not just ‘a bit forgetful’, I’m as scatty as hell. How I hold down a job (a profession, no less), is beyond me. I once left a cello at a bus stop.

24. I am probably more scared than your average person of people in authority (policemen, in particular). My mum was quite authoritarian (in a good way) which I think explains this trait. She once convinced me she could see me where ever I was and I was incredibly well-behaved, probably until I forgot she had the power of omniscience (see no. 23).

25. The first time I was asked for ID was in a pub I had been visiting for the previous eighteen months on my eighteenth birthday. Oh, the irony(!)

26. I was born at 9.40pm on a Thursday in September, some way past my due date. This made me one of the oldest in my year at school, rather than the youngest which, I’m sure, gave me a certain amount of confidence.

27. My DB is a wonderful cook and cooks for us regularly, which means I can concentrate on the desserts, sweets and baking (which DB doesn’t enjoy making).

28. I am an atheist. I would rather be agnostic because (a) T.H. Huxley (who coined the term) was Aldous Huxley’s grandfather and Aldous Huxley is one of my favourite writers, and (b) because agnoticism makes more intellectual sense to me. But it’s my tough luck because I don’t believe that God exists.

29. I cannot speak any language other than my mother tongue.

30. When I was small I had an imaginary friend called Inky. He lived under my grandparents house, so I only saw him when I went to visit them. He was great fun.

31. My fingers and thumbs are double-jointed.

32. I wear a hearing aid. Not for fun (see no.16 above).

33. I am not a tidy person. I used to manage to be tidy at work, but increasingly my desk looks like an origami bomb has gone off.

34. I once drank so much coffee that I had to pull my car over over to the side of the road because I had such a bad case of the jitters.

35. I really hate the Kate Bush song “Babushka” because my school mates used to sing “Babushka, Babushka, Babushka-ya-ya” to me over and over again for years and years. Babushka sounds a bit like my name, you see. So clever.

36. I have purpley reddish birth marks all up my left arm. They were a lot more purple and solid looking when I was very young, but they have broken up and paled over the years.

37. I love reading. When I was small, my reading habit bordered on the obsessive. I once nearly knocked myself out walking into a lamp post when I was reading while I walked to school.

38. Knitting has hugely impacted (negatively) on the number of books I read. I need to buy a book stand so I can do both at the same time (and be seriously anti-social!).

39. I was games captain and hockey captain at school. I find this hard to believe given the amount of exercise I do now (i.e. virtually nil).

40. I hate driving, but I have just re-learned parallel parking which makes living in London much easier.

41. I love crème caramel. One of my goals is to learn how to make it. I love the creamy notes of the “crème” against the slightly bitter caramel component.

42. My favourite flower for nostalgic reasons are antirrhinums or “snap dragons” because I had fun making their heads ’snap’ when I was little.

43. I once fell over and sat on a cactus. My grandmother had to remove the spines!

44. My first pets were fish. We had lots of them over time. My favourites were a white koi with orange cheeks called Yo-Yo, and a tiny tench called Squiddly-Diddly.

45. I tuck myself up into a duvet cocoon in bed to the extent that DB and I have separate duvets.

46. I had clarinet and cello lessons when I was a child, but I never progressed…most probably because I am tone deaf. I’d love to be able to play an instrument now.

47. When I was a secretarial temp I was offered a permanent position at every place I worked.

48. I primarily like music with guitars and drums and tunes, e.g. Radiohead, Interpol, etc.

49. The best gig I have ever been to was Beck at the Brixton Academy a couple. It was breath-taking.

50. I like clothes and shoes and bags and jewellery, but I don’t like shopping!

51. The only bone I have ever broken is in my nose. I think I may have done it more than once though.

52. In the last few years I have started getting grumpy if I don’t eat regularly.

53. In the past I was extremely even-tempered and this was always commented on in school reports and so on. I am less so now (see # 17, for example).  People continue to think of me as a calm person, which I (and DF!) find laughable!

54. I graduated from Durham University with upper second class honours. I didn’t like it there.

55. I love ginger beer – the more spicy the better.

56. I took a short course in British Sign Language once but the only signs I can remember are “thank you” and “bomb”. I think one of those is going to come in more useful than the other.

57. I don’t really like talking on the telephone.

58. I sleep very heavily.

59. My first car was a Ford Fiesta called Hugo. It belonged to my aunt before me.

60. 10 countries I have visited are: Estonia, Finland, Malaysia, Thailand, Italy, Antigua, Israel, New Zealand, Japan and Tunisia. There are others, but I can’t beat DB (his parents were travel agents!).

61. I had my belly button pierced when I was at sixth form college. I don’t wear a piercing any more but the hole is still there. I also have two ear piercings in my left ear and one in my right.

62. I have a great deal of patience in queues, but not much else.

63. I am a member of the British library.

64. I prefer dark chocolate.

65. I took a cycling proficiency test when I was small and passed and I’ve forgotten how to indicate for a right turn.

66. I have four post-graduate diplomas.  Three are legal qualifications and one is in interior design.

67. I love stationery and have done since I was little, particularly paper-based stationery like writing paper, cards and envelopes. Unhelpfully, my enthusiasm seems to grow as my letter writing decreases. Great(!) Stash # 2!