More things you Didn’t need to know about MEME

I usually shy away from MEMEs, partly because I have an absolute horror of questionnaires (they all look like TESTS of some kind. I usually fail tests.) and partly because I can’t imagine who wants to know the answers to the same questions that are being asked of literally hundreds of people. We can’t all be that imaginatively different when asked ‘what is your favourite drink?’ can we?

Also, as I am known to be curmudgeonly about this kind of thing I am often last on people’s list to be sent the damn things so by the time it gets to me everyone else has done it already and I haven’t got anybody else to palm it off on to.

Oh GOD! It’s like being stuck with a chain letter and then I get 10000000000 years bad luck or something for not doing it, or not doing it right, or saying the wrong thing or being boring or.. I don’t know.
ANYWAY.
I’m doing this one because the lovely Amy at and1moremeansfour tagged me, pointing out that we are both on the UK top 100 parent bloggers list (although she kindly didn’t point out that she was higher up than me because I am major slacker and didn’t post much last month whereas she posts nearly every day despite being 23 years old and having FOUR CHILDREN) and she doesn’t know yet that I am a churlish ingrate so I’m trying hard to disguise this from her.

Unfortunately, however, despite there only being ten questions I found myself unable to answer many of them so I had to change a few to suit myself which IS CHEATING.

But this is my blog, so I did it.

You may give me an F. I don’t mind. I am used to it.

I may even enjoy it in a perverse kind of way. It is rock and roll. kerrang!!!!

The original questions:
1. Who is the hottest movie star?
2. Apart from your house and your car what’s the most expensive thing you have ever bought?
3. What’s your most treasured memory?
4.What was the best gift you ever received as a child?
5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made?
6. 4 words to describe myself
7. what was my highlight or lowlight of 2008?
8. Favourite film?
9. Tell me one thing I don’t know about you
10. If you were a comic book/strip or cartoon character, who would you be?

Here are my new questions and answers:

1. What do you think about movie stars?
I rarely give them much thought. I find people’s fascination with celebrity COMPLETELY BAFFLING. Really. Having said that, have met a few movie stars here and there and some were nice, some were not. All seemed to be very, very concerned about their place in the universe. This did not seem to be a comfortable feeling. I did not envy them.

2. If you had large swathes of disposable income, what would you spend it on?
I would take my husband and children traveling to see as much of the world as we could and try to accumulate as much pleasurable experience with as little material consumption as possible.

3. What is your most treasured memory?
How could I choose just one? Of course holding one’s children for the first time is quite sublime, but is it any more special than the last time you kissed their precious faces as they skipped out the door? Or reading the loving note left by my husband this morning telling me he’d taken the children out to breakfast. It was not the note, it was the knowledge of love and understanding of the 30 years of migraines that I have suffered and that only a long sleep followed by a quiet morning alone will cure them. A shaft of sunlight, a piece of paper in my hand and love suffusing my heart, remembering this kind man who would be home in less than an hour? I find it hard to place premiums in the moment..

4. What is the best gift you received as a child?
When I was nine years old, after years of begging and pleading and almost giving up on the idea, I was finally allowed a kitten of my own. Carbonel, a small black, half-siamese kitten aged 8 weeks was chosen and he came to live with us. My father says he can still remember coming home from work and seeing me through the window holding up the tiny cat in my hand with my whole face alight with joy. Carby slept on the pillow by my face all night that first night, and throughout his long life we never spent a day apart. He was the most personable of animals and he sat politely at the table on his own chair during mealtimes never begging , just wanting to be part of the family. When he died of FIV, aged 13 I thought my heart would break. But it didn’t. I just haven’t ever quite loved an animal the same since.

5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?
Giving up too soon on myself. I am still learning from this. I am not going to do it again.

6.Four words to describe yourself
Inventive, funny, loving, eccentric

7.Highlight or lowlight of 2008
Taking my two small children to the bush in Africa on my own. We were gloriously, crazily free on the wild continent and despite the obstacles we ran into, we had the most fantastic time and came back much the richer for it.

8. What are you reading right now?
I am simultaneously reading A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre, The Plot to Save the Planet by Brian Dumaine – this is a business oriented book, Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman which is entertaining but patchy and True Tales of American Life by Paul Auster. Also have great plans to reread Brave New World but it’s at the end of rather a long queue as you can see..

9. Tell me one thing I don’t know about you.
I am rather partial to iced gems

10. If you could be a fictional character who would you be?
Today I’d like to be one of the Famous Five from an Enid Blyton book. I would like to step back in time to a prewar Britain and eat delicious things (lashings of custard!) and ride about on my bike with uncomplicated chums in a world free of pedophiles, nuclear weapons, terrorism, global warming and long before the spectre of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had foretold the beginning of the end of the lovely hedgerows of the country of my birth.

Now, I’m supposed to tag a number of bloggers so they, too will be forced to do this. I can’t remember how many so I’m going to arbitrarily pick five and give them permission to change the questions to suit themselves in the interests of entertainment.

Here you go:

It’s Not Just Me Is It?

Are You Receiving Me?

Stuff2Eat

Califlorna

Zooarchaeologist

Mothership xo

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