Apparently I'm stylish!

Goodness me. Who knew?! Many thanks to Fiona from Handmade by Fiona for nominating me... and I'm going to blow her cover completely by revealing that she is, in fact... my sister! Fiona's about to move back to Germany (much to her delight) after a couple of years freezing to death in Toronto, Canada.










I gather that there are various rules about being nominated for this award, the first of which is that I have to tell you seven things about myself.

• I'm ambidextrous. At one point in mid-1970's Britain there was a spate of gruesome news reports about people who'd lost limbs (and even a head, as I recall) by doing stupid things like waving out of car windows. Somehow this was conflated in my 9- or 10- year old mind with notions of improved efficiency through ergonomics: I read a fascinating text book from Bognor Regis Library about how to improve efficiency with the result that I decided to teach myself to do lots of things with my other hand and even my feet just in case... I was a strange child.


• I'm a petrol head. Fast cars and particularly motorbikes are something of a passion! My mother didn't really want me to learn to drive a car because at that point her world view still included the idea that gentlemen drove ladies. Somehow I don't think I was ever 'lady' material because as soon as I could afford it I got my motorbike licence and have been addicted to them ever since. Not those retro Harley jobs, mind... too much chrome to polish. I love proper lean-forward Japanese sports bikes. I like Ducatis and Triumphs too, but my legs are too short *sigh *


• Talking of motorbikes, I have an ENORMOUS head, geographically speaking. It's an English size 7 5/8 which translates to XXXL in most helmets. This means that I look like an alien in a motorbike helmet with my huge round head sitting on top of my narrow shoulders...


• I have the numeric equivalent of dyslexia with numbers. Disnomia? I'm not sure, but anyway I read numbers the wrong way round and in the wrong order. Always have, always will. It's probably partly what made mathematics such a nightmare at school. As an adult I have techniques that help but I still get things wrong, which is a real pain.


• I try and meditate with more or less success: when I need it most I'm usually too stressed out to find the time and space to do it, which is madness really since it helps so much. Hmm. Perhaps I need to reorganise some priorities there.


• I spent some years in the early 1990s working with people with AIDS, at a time when the general public thought they could catch HIV infection from being in the same room as an HIV positive person. It taught me a lot about human dignity and about dying well. Modern drugs have completely changed the landscape: when I was working as a 'buddy' for the Terence Higgins Trust in London the life expectancy from diagnosis to death was 18 months.


• I love tatting! It's more popular here in Australia than in the UK which is heartening because otherwise I think of it as a dying art. My grandmother taught my mother who taught me, and I fully intend to teach my daughter when she's older. She's expressed an interest but right now she has a plaster cast on her broken wrist so I think it will have to wait!

OK, so much for the seven things... now I have to think of other blogs to nominate, but I'm going to think and read in private and then come back to you in a separate post about that one.