Taglicious Tangents

If you follow this blog for my murmurings about reducing waste, then look away now because today I'm going off on a tangent and it's a real 180 degrees one at that.

You see I've been double tagged, by the lovely ladies Just Gai and Maisie who have been waiting patiently for me to stop talking rubbish and reveal some random photos and interesting minutiae of my life.

So, the photo you see above is in response to Maisie's tag, where she asked me to select the 6th folder in My Pictures directory and then publish the 6th photo in the list. The risk...and then the relief...that it wasn't a photo of me doing something embarrassing. Who knows what I could have found. At least the one I uncovered is appropriate for the blog.

The photo might look seasonal but it isn't really. I took it in February this year, when using up the mincemeat left over from last Christmas. Little T and I had mixed it with apricot jam to make a batch of tarts, which were delicious. At the time, I bought ready-made pastry. Now, I make my own. So if you've got surplus mincemeat this Christmas, I recommend a good dose of apricot jam to add a lighter touch.

Now onto the next one, Just Gai's tag to reveal six interesting(?) facts about me. Hmm...so here goes....and don't say I didn't warn you.



Fact 1. I have an inexplicable dislike of Mickey Mouse and all talking animals. My mother always said if she "won the pools" she'd take my sister and I to Disneyland. I remain extremely pleased that she never did. Meeting a real life Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck would send me running to the hills.

Fact 2. I am immensely accident-prone. Recent events include setting fire to some cutlery in the kitchen, boiling the teapot instead of the kettle and falling down the steps outside a French tourist office to a cosmopolitan audience of tourists. However, the most momentous occasion was when I was nearly killed by a wardrobe. It's true...an old oak one that fell towards me when I turned my back on it. The moral is, never turn your back on an old piece of furniture. See the full story here.

Fact 3. I have a love of nostalgia...from black and white movies to vintage jewellery. A time where ladies wore dresses and hats. I adore vintage brooches, the more sparkling the better.


Fact 4. My dad died when I was only 4. He was killed in a motorbike accident. I have never got over it and I never will. I haven't told my children because I don't want them to have the fear of losing a parent so young so I will tell them when they're older. In the meantime, my 4 year old is fascinated by motorbikes and talks about riding them when he's grown up. I live in hope that he doesn't. The anniversary of my dad's death coincided with the first day of my Zero Waste Week and my first broadcast on Woman's Hour. I hope I would have made him proud.


Fact 5. I made my "national TV debut" in 1989 when the BBC came to film the opening of Djanogly City Technology College, a new flagship school based in Nottingham. I was a library assistant pretending to check-out books to students using a lightpen, which back in those days was new technology. Margaret Thatcher came to open the college and my job was to follow her around with a camcorder...a tricky job indeed, trying to avoid filling up the film with images of her back. I would never have guessed my next national news appearance would be almost two decades later, wearing my pink wellies in landfill.


Fact 6. I once let a woman walk out of the loo with toilet roll tucked into her knickers. I know that might make me look evil, but it was in the day when I wasn't that confident, wouldn't say boo to a goose and I didn't want to embarrass her by saying "excuse me, you've got toilet roll tucked in your knickers." The shame...both hers and mine and I am truly sorry. Every time I see an Andrex advert the memory comes flooding back.

-8-

Oh, I love tags. They make take some time but they're a great way of finding out more about other bloggers. So being the nosey-parker as I am, I'm now going to tag six other people I don't get to visit as much as I'd like but have deliciously interesting blogs that you should really take a look at.

And here they are...

A Pot a thought and a smidgen of dirt
Aiming Low
Faites-Simple
Margaret's Ramblings
Millennium Housewife
One stitch at a time


Good luck folks.
_____________________________________________________