Ten things about me

Louisa at The Really Good Life has given me an award.

Thanks, Louisa :-)

This one involves telling you ten random things about myself and passing it on to ten some other bloggers. I won't tell you ten random things. I will tell you ten things, but they won't be random (see Thing 1).

I'll pass it on to three blogs who probably won't join in the game because they're not that sort of blog, but you, dear reader, get to share my appreciation of all the lovely pictures. The first is Page Created A Photo a Day - the clue's in the name. The second is Coffee Slut, who does include some words with her photos, but I mainly love this blog for the beautiful pictures. Finally, my blog reader gets clogged up with posts from So give me your hand and let's jump out the window, which is just full of beautiful images, and some words too.

So, ten things about me:

1. I get annoyed about misuse of the word “random.” I spent much of my working life teaching statistics and I know the definition of “random.” It does not mean, “haphazard,” “slightly odd,” or, as in this case, “carefully chosen.”
2. I have the worst sense of direction of almost anyone I know, but if you want to manoeuvre a large wardrobe up a twisted flight of stairs, I'm your woman. From this I conclude that spatial awareness is not a unitary ability, contrary to current psychological theories. I've never got round to doing the research to test this hypothesis, though.
3. I notice and care about things like the shocking transformation from “conclusion” to “hypothesis” in the last point. As I wrote that there was a little voice in my head shouting, “That's wrong! You can't say that!” I wrote it anyway, though, because I think the sentences look better like that.
4. I am a hoarder, which is probably not news to you. I can't stand throwing things away. Whenever I overcome this and force myself to accept the conventional wisdom that too much clutter is A Bad Thing, I always regret it when I need whatever-it-was just a few weeks after throwing it away.
5. Pop music is, and always has been, an alien world to me. At my current stage of life, this is not in the least bit troubling, but when I was a teenager it left me shut off from my peers. I lived in fear of the question, “What kind of music do you like?” because I had NO IDEA! I'll stop here before I start reliving the horrors of being a teenager.
6. I learnt hairdressing at the BBC. In my last job I was occasionally called on to do TV interviews. This was very exciting, but meant that I had to learn about hair and make-up, which I'd successfully avoided until then. I discovered that a blow-dry is not simply a means of drying hair, but the hairdresser spent hours using this method to get some life into my hair. In the Green Room at Shepherds Bush studios, I observed a BBC hairdresser get the same effect more quickly using a “hot brush” - a method I could manage myself. Since then, I have discovered that avoiding shampoo has much the same result.
7. I was married by twenty and divorced by thirty. I learnt that eternal love is not something you can promise someone. When Ian and I got married, we chose our wedding vows carefully, promising trust, respect and friendship for “as long as love shall last.”
8. My mother died when I was thirteen. I'll never know what my relationship with her would have been like as an adult, but knowing what her relationship was like with her mother, perhaps that's just as well. I get to remember her as a wonderful person and choose to ignore her faults and weaknesses.
9. I love folk dancing. One of the best things about living in Cambridgeshire was joining The Round, a folk dance club. As the excitement of our new life is wearing off, I'm starting to miss that. I hope I'll find a group to join in this part of the world.
10. Another good thing about living in Cambridgeshire was that I got to fulfil a childhood dream of ice-skating outdoors.