My 25 Random Things About Me

Everyone else is doing it so why not

1. My biggest fear is being eaten by a shark but I still watch Jaws whenever it is on TV
2. My most favourite movies ever are ‘Rocky III’ and ‘The Slipper and the Rose’
3. The smell and taste of wine and champagne make me want to vomit
4. I spent one year working for the Council Tax office trying to track down people who were trying to avoid old bills
5. I have lived in the south, middle and north of the UK
6. I was once asked out by an Aston Villa player and said yes just because he was famous
7. If I never find love I will be a crazy spinster cat lady and be perfectly happy
8. I went to a police line up after witnessing a mugging and found it inappropriately amusing
9. My favourite song is ‘Beyond the Sea’ by Bobby Darin
10. When I was a kid I hated the nickname She-ra but now love it
11. I have fainted 5 times, in church on Christmas Day, in the Doctors Surgery, at the top of the stairs at home, on the escalators in the Pavillions in Brum and in a pub at my brothers gig
12. The thing I despise the most is Bananas, can’t stand the look, smell, texture or taste of them
13. My Ally McBeal style ‘theme songs’ that make me feel good are ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and ‘What a Feeling’
14. I spent New Years Eve 1999/2000 dressed as Marilyn Monroe
15. After years of working in bars I have met countless celebrities, my favourite is Hunter from Gladiators
16. I just love love love musicals, could spend the whole day watching them
17. Every time my Mom says ‘tek’ instead of ‘take’ my whole body cringes
18. I can play ‘Colours of Day’ on the recorder flawlessly
19. I think Elvis Presley and Neil Diamond have the sexiest voices ever
20. On separate occasions 2 friends have told me that if they could look like anyone in the world they would look like me and I still don’t know what to say to that
21. It took me 7 years to get a tattoo
22. The Priest at my first primary school told my Mom he thought I would become a Nun because I loved Mass so much
23. The only part of my body I like is my green eyes
24. My first memory is the day my brother Mark was born, I was 2 ½
25. I never wanted to travel to Asia to ‘find myself’ but I did

Sisters say the nicest, truest things

I was watching a movie with my sister over Christmas, The Holiday, a nice Christmassy movie for some QT with the sis during my brief visit back to the UK and she, in her 13-going-on-20-year-old way told me that the character played by Kate Winslet is me. She repeated this over and over and found it endlessly amusing. Whenever Kate’s character would get excited or cry my sister would laugh and say ‘that’s so you’. And this is why apparently - fair skin, blonde hair, excitable and emotional (that being crying).

After brooding on this for several weeks I still can’t decide how I feel about it. My sister knows me very, very well and would only have said it if she meant so it seems that must be what I am like.

Yes, the character has some charms, she bounces back, she has the strength to change her unhappy life, she believes in love and happy endings (and gets one). They are all things I would like to be like.

However, she also tried to kill herself by sticking her head in her oven and was pathetically in love with a man who strung her along for years and didn‘t love her back. I hereby vow to never do either of those things.

Have you ever been likened to a character or had someone nail your personality with one sentence and completely blow your mind with it? It’s a revelation but not exactly a pleasant experience.

Let's start with Hello and Why

I’m a bit late to blogging I know, but I only just now feel that it will be good for me to do it. So why now, well 2008 (Jan to August anyway) was without doubt the worst year of my life. Personally and professionally it was just shit, if it could go wrong it did, and boy did it. It nearly destroyed me. Oh yeah, I also started the year newly 30 and heavier than I had ever been by about 2st.

The only thing that got me through the first half of the year was knowing that I was going to be spending mid Sep to mid Dec on a charity expedition in Malaysian Borneo with Raleigh. I had worked hard to get on the programme and I was very, very excited about it and what I could get out of it. Not only would it physically remove me from the problems back home but it would give me time to focus on me and sort through some of the clutter in my head.

By about July it was very clear to me that when I returned from Borneo I wouldn’t be able to continue in my current job, the situation had become untenable and most importantly I was bored and needed a new big challenge and dramatic change of lifestyle. Fate clearly decided that I was right and helped me out big time by securing me a new job (only 2 weeks before I flew out to Borneo) on the sunny southern Cyprus coastline that would be ready and waiting for me to start in Jan 09.

So September finally came and I spent 17 long hours travelling to Borneo and had my first big adventure in life. I met some amazing people who will hopefully be in my life forever, saw amazing things like villages and communities, the mountains, the jungle, the most stunning beaches in the world and monkeys in the wild. And I did amazing things like trekked through and slept in the jungle in hammocks (even got my very own jungle injury), swam in rivers, got attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes at once and managed to avoid Dengue Fever, sang karaoke for the first time and got to genuinely help people and make a difference to some lives. It was very cool indeed. What was most amazing about it was how it changed me and challenged me in the ways I didn’t expect. Dealing with difficult and changing group dynamics, living with and dealing with other peoples deep seated issues and dramas that affected the whole house, coping with my own crap health issues and trying to get on with people that, quite frankly, I just didn’t like. The most unexpected and challenging thing for me was having the character traits I don’t like abut myself mirrored back at me by other people. This was VERY unnerving and caused me to do a lot of soul searching. I had no option but to accept that I had some of these traits that were just awful to witness in other people and was determined to cast these aside and start again when I got to Cyprus. I was determined to get back to the old me of my early to mid twenties that I used to like, that used to not let life affect her so much. Obviously I know I will never be the same as my early twenties, every experience I have had since then has left it’s mark but my aim now is to not let it scar me too deeply and to get everything out of life that I want and, God damn it, that I deserve. I didn’t leave Borneo with everything being magically fixed, that’s a work in progress (I actually left still a physical and emotional mess); but I left knowing what needed to change, and that’s what was most important. That and a handful of really, really good friends. So this is why I’m a blogger now, so I can record what I wanted to happen and change and remind myself of that when times get tough (which they surely will) and just get down in writing how I am feeling about certain things, events and issues. I’m in Cyprus now, am getting to grips with my new job (which is exactly the challenge I need), my new lifestyle (which still needs some tweaking) and new mindset (which is pretty good at the moment). I have started to make friends, I have got a cat (a grey and white cutie called Ally) and I like the people I work with (which is a relief), so, so far so good. Now is the time to put the changes into practice, the scary bit. Wish me luck