Memetime II - Five Things About Me

Some time ago I was tagged with this meme by LucyFishWife of Life Happens Between Books, so here goes;

1. I was an unconscionably cruel child who used to pull the wings off kittens (well, have you ever seen a kitten with wings? Told you!)
2. I took several flying lessons in a Cessna 152 at 18 and did my own take-off first time. Sadly finances didn't permit me to continue, thus my flying 'career' was cut prematurely short!
3. Conversely I didn't learn to drive until I was 32! (though ironically I had a job with the Driving Standards Agency for a while in my 20's)
4. I dislike the colour green, considering it belongs on grass rather than people, and have resisted attempts by various well-meaning souls all my life exhorting me to adopt the 'leprechaun look' - ie 'Why don't you wear green? It would look lovely with your red hair', as much as I have resisted the fashion advice that redheads should confine themselves to clownish orange lipstick and bad blue eye shadow! Indeed I have found that despite the generally assumed 'handicap' of my colouring, I can carry most colours with relative élan - even red - which I love (and which co-incidentally my mother hates and always swore I couldn't possibly wear!). My favourite colour of all is Burgundy - unfailingly warm, flattering and classy - not to mention the colour of theatres, the finest wine and Kings!
5. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm appalled by this new trend for not installing doors on bedroom en-suite bathrooms, and wonder how romance can possibly survive this lack of the most basic personal privacy! On a similar topic I can't abide people who try and conduct shouted conversations at you through the keyholes of those bathrooms which do still possess doors, and regard it as the height of bad manners (unless of course there is only one bathroom in the house and they have genuine need of your hurrying up!). I'm sure a psychiatrist would get some mileage out of this, but for me a little bathroom etiquette is merely one aspect of the wider everyday respect for one another that we all be entitled to expect.

As this is quite a well-worn meme, which I expect most bloggers will have had before, I will desist from tagging anyone on this occasion. Unless of course you insist!

Memetime I - Books

Having been tagged with this one aeons ago by the delightful Reluctant Blogger I thought it was high time I caught up with my memes!

Books I Have Always Meant To Read

1. Down and Out In Paris and London by George Orwell - It sits patiently in my bookcase but I have never got past the first couple of chapters as I find it too harrowing.
2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - I hardly got through the stage play as again, it was just too harrowing and I'm too wimpy. I still remember being reduced to tears by the closing chapters of his classic The Grapes of Wrath following the malnourished cavalcade of poor white families making their way across America in beat-up old vehicles hoping for a new life of plenty in California following the Great Depression, with the daughter of the principal family eventually reduced to breastfeeding a starving man with the milk meant for her stillborn infant. I understand most people go through a John Steinbeck phase in their early 20s!
3. Rather shamefacedly my friend Helen Rappaport's novel 'Dark Hearts of Chicago' (co-written with William Horwood), which I have now possessed for over a year and not finished yet! It follows the hair-raising adventures of an early female reporter dispatched by her New York editor (one suspects to get rid of her since she has foisted herself upon his employ in the days when this wasn't done!) to the 1893 World Fair in Chicago to investigate the fate of a missing woman, also from New York. It has won rave reviews and I know it will be brilliant, with an authenticity found in few other novels (Helen is also a well-known historian), but between being a dead slow and easily-distracted reader and the fact that my copy is a large first edition hardback which is hard to cart around and heavy to take to bed - ok, then there's the squeamish scenes in the 19thC Chicago meat processing plants - well I just haven't finished it - sshhhh - don't tell her!

Two Books Which Changed My Life

1.Cancer as a Turning Point by Lawrence Le Shan - the best book I know to help anyone get through cancer. Sensible, supportive, comforting and inspiring to help the cancer sufferer unlock all sorts of inner creativity, strengths and managing mechanisms they may not realise they had in order to turn their remaining time (however short or long) around to achieve the best possible outcome that they can, whether that be a successful return to health, or a minimal-regret, minimal-pain, peaceful farewell without unfinished business. What I really like about it is that it's not about positivity-at-all-costs, religion or advocating a particular form of alternative or conventional medicine, but rather helps cancer sufferers to ask themselves what they might be learning from the cancer experience, however difficult, as a key to re-thinking their previous assumptions, attitudes and feelings about their lives, with their families encouraged to play an active role in aiding their emotional and physical healing and supporting any changes they may wish to instigate as a result.
Perhaps my friend would have survived in any case, but I like to think this book helped! A great 'Emergency, Break Glass!' book, though it is not always easy to get a copy of, surprisingly, despite many reprints.
2.Mr God, This Is Anna - by Fynn. A lanky young sailor in 1930's East End London comes across a hungry four year old waif whilst sitting in a doorway having a smoke. They strike up a conversation and he ends up buying some sausages which he shares with her before taking her home to his mother, who promptly dunks her in a tin bath for a good scrub. So begins his extraordinary relationship with the young Anna, who decides to move in with them full-time (despite vain attempts to find her parents), and although scarcely able to read and write, the little girl turns out to have an extraordinary and voracious appetite for knowledge, testing Fynn to the limit on maths, astrology, nature and 'Mr God' in particular, so that after her untimely death at the age of eight, he feels obliged to record their many magical conversations together discussing the world and its workings, and all that he himself learned from them.
Child Protection would never approve of the fact that she often climbs uninvited into his bed for a cuddle and tells him she loves him, but their unlikely bond is the whole charm of the book. You will feel touched by angels by the end. Happily it just about escapes a descent into schmaltz.

Recommend a Book I've Been Talking About Since The Day I Read It

'I Didn't Get Where I Am Today' by David Nobbs - the hilarious autobiography of one of Britain's foremost comedy writers, responsible for 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' among many other television and novelistic successes over the years. This man is a genius for observing life's absurdities, seemingly inspired by being subjected to a few himself, and from the moment he is single-handedly mistaken for an entire battalion while doing his young mans' stint in National Service, shipped over to Denmark with an entire deck to himself and then served over 300 dinners by a very surprised-looking Danish Chef, you will find it as impossible as I did to put it down. I also loved his behind-the-scenes experiences of getting television both accepted and made - not without its own many absurdities and outrageous contradictions. A great book for a television nut like me! Or just anyone who loves comedy or writing really.

Who better to pass this particular meme baton onto than new Lit Chick on the block - LucyFishWife of: Life Happens Between Books

A Few of My Favourite Things...

Have just discovered I was tagged by London journalist Rachel North several weeks ago for a meme on the subject of 7 favourite things (apparently to counter all the negative pet hate lists that are the usual fare of we bloggers!)

But how to get away from the cheesy long walks in the country, cute furry animals, open hearth fires, chocolate, making love, everyblogger list! Ah well, here goes;

1. Candles – I’ve got into the habit of lighting at least a couple every evening when home as I find them unbelievably relaxing. Candlelit baths, even better, though sadly the bathroom in my current abode is a little cramped to take any fire safety risks!
2. The Seaside. Although I don’t live by the sea, I find I often long for it and when I see it, it’s like being able to breathe again. I particularly adore historic seaside resorts with piers.
3. Beautiful Architecture, particularly Victorian or Regency, though I tend to rate anything up until the 1930s, when it all went downhill in my view! Except for my one concession to post-modernism - the rather thrilling Arkitecture
4. Jokes that lead you to expect they are going to be incredibly rude, but turn out to have a surreal/silly ending that subverts your expectations completely!
5. All Television Bonnet & Period Dramas, except for bad re-makes.
6. Good Design. In everything from buildings and towns to clothes and household goods. Why does it always have to be a choice between functional and beautiful? Good design should fulfil function, aesthetics and last at least as long as you do (also very green!). Good design is so rare, despite the fact designers are ten-a-penny these days, it makes my heart leap when I see it!
7. Mystique – not enough of it left in this world, and I’m as guilty as anyone for exposing it to the harsh light of writerly revelation. The only thing as sexy as mystique is talent. To know someone you’re still finding out about and who still surprises you after ten years of friendship is a joy.

I'm guessing many bloggers have probably already covered this theme, but I'll take a risk and tag Reluctant Blogger just in case! Anyone else who fancies this meme and hasn't had it yet, let me know and I'll link to you!

13/03/08 The Sagittarian at More Canterbury Tales, you're hereby tagged!

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My Bedside Cabinets Bare All!

While usually a reluctant meme artist, blogmate Rol Hirst has inspired me to follow his lead by photographing my bedroom cabinets and talking about them.

As you will see they are mismatched owing to buying them at different times from my local old furniture emporium, which specialises in buying up secondhand furniture and fixing it up for re-sale with a lick of paint and the occasional new knob. I think the black one was about £35 and the pink one £25. I keep meaning to paint the pink one black to match better, but I never get round to it and idiosyncracy (apathy?) has now set firmly in. Moreover, being limited to the narrowest cabinets I could find owing to the compact nature of my bedroom, I never could find a matching pair and was getting tired of spilling glasses of water over the carpet when getting in and out of bed while I waited.

The black cabinet is graced by one of B&Q's classier early 90s lamps, inherited from my former fiancé, and one of my first adult possessions worth over £5, a notebook to scribble in lest I wake inspired in the night (blank, as you observe!) and most of my current reading material at various stages of digestion (self-discipline has never been a strong point!) including the delightful Edwardian comic novel 'Eliza' featuring a pompous middle-class clerk and his long-suffering wife who is only ever seen through his misconstrued impressions of her and which has been causing me to laugh out loud on buses securing a seat to myself lately, plus a blue box of tissues - the room was originally intended to have a 'seaside chalet' feel and I still automatically feel drawn to blue objects, despite having veered off the original theme somewhat, except for my pebble coasters.

Which brings me to the gloriously garish blue LCD clock/radio on the pink bedside table - so bright I usually have to put it under the bed to sleep, but wonderfully cheering on dark stormy nights when the wind howls. Hideous alarm siren and crackly radio, but in lieu of the multi-coloured numeral radio/alarm I really wanted at three times the price, I've learned to love it!

A glass of water is a must as I unfailingly wake up thirsty in the night. A cheap wood lamp (Wilkinsons' best!) originally for the guest room in my last abode but was damned if I was going to leave it behind for the benefit of my not-very-nice-former-housemate also graces the table, along with multi-vitamins for my wild self-constructive tendencies and some photos I took recently of Oxford by night, which am still debating whether to post, complete the ensemble of what my well-dressed cabinets are wearing this Winter.

Finally you can't have failed to notice the black and white 'mink' blanket which I throw over the duvet in Winter. Their designs are never subtle, but I adore these heavenly supersoft blankets, unconscionably cruel as it is that six Acrylics must die in the manufacture of each one.

For sheer writerly decadence it's hard to beat typing in bed, laptop on knee, underblanket on and propped up in the middle on all four pillows. Well the next best thing to a full-time relationship that is, when obviously you are both to be found typing blog postings at your laptops next to each other…

I won't be swine enough to tag anyone else to a parallel posting, but please don't be shy to share your intimate bedroom cabinet secrets, my brethren blogoholics!