Tagged! 8 Random Things About Me

The lovely Tash from www.vintagepretty.org has tagged me to reveal 8 random things about me. I have tried hard to think of really random things. So please do not think me too strange! Alison at www.brocantehome.typepad.com and Midori at http://prettylittleblog.blogspot.com I tag you!

1) Automatic revolving doors flummox me. I always seem to get there just as there isn’t quite enough time to squeeze in, at which point they seem to slooow down, mocking me for not taking the risk, and causing the queue behind me to tut.

2) When I am not feeling well, the only food I want to eat is Heinz Tomato Soup, with a cottage-loaf roll (which I always think of as a ‘little red hen loaf’) and if I am not feeling too bad, little cubes of cheddar stirred into the soup so they go all melty melty.

3) When I am really tired, I talk gibberish before I go to sleep. Apparently. I have my husbands word on this! He says that we can be having a perfectly normal conversation, you know, the usual things- what have you got on tomorrow, what shall we have for dinner- when suddenly I will say something like ‘how many clovers are in the pie?’ ‘but it is the moon, the moon!’ or ‘have you seen them fly?’. Very random.

4) I need to have a book on the go or I just don’t feel right. It doesn’t have to be the all-absorbing-have-to-be-reading-it-right-NOW kind of book, just something that is there, waiting for me to read. I have been known to pace up and down in front of our three bookcases, waililng ‘but there is nothing to read!’

5) I have a very strange body. No, really. I get a certain kind of headache if there is going to be a thunder storm, and the elbow I broke aches if it is going to be very cold. I have a scar on my thumb, at the base of the metacarpal bone that looks like a tummy button to me. I have a rib that is really, really bendy. And my joints make me feel like a little old lady, clicking and snapping and being stiff a lot of the time. See, I really do have a very strange body!

6) Some days, I can sparkle. I seem to give out a little glow of energy, somehow. I feel good, I paint my lips red (the same red that Dita Von Teese wears!) I put on my high heeled red shoes and I just seem to shimmer through the day. The next day, I will wake up and my hair won’t sit right, and nothing seems to gel. I wish I could keep it up. I have dreams of being a lady who wears stockings. And is perfectly made up. Elegant, I think is the word that I aspire to.

7) In idle moments, I like to plan escape routes and hiding places. That way I am always prepared. See, if the lion did escape from the zoo, I would be ahead of the crowds because they would all be thinking ‘agh! Where shall I run?’ while I would already be halfway there. (To the lion enclosure of course, it would be the last place the lion would want to go!)

8) I love words. I love to discover new words, and to use words that have perhaps fallen out of use a little. They convey our meanings and thoughts, and it is so delicious to have exactly the right word. I read an article the other day about how the word ‘repel’ is falling out of use, and is being replaced with ‘repulse’, although they do not mean the same thing. They both come from the same Latin word ‘repellere’ which means to drive back, but repulse is what you use for when you are physically driven back, such as in a battle. However, you often hear people say on the news, or read in an interview ‘what a repulsive man!’. What they should say is ‘what a repellent man!’.

As I result I love programmes such as QI and books on archaic words. After reading a lot of Jane Austen I seem to find myself falling into her patterns of language when speaking, writing or thinking. Words are just bliss, really. They are there at our command. I like to think of it as learning to bake lots of different recipes rather than just the usual Victoria sponge!