Good for you, god knows we could do with some more of the things. 

But how does one go about becoming a writer, I am often asked?

Simples.

(Someone wrote that advert, which makes them more of a writer than you. Hush don’t think about it.)

How to be a writer

A crucial first step is to go round telling everyone you’re a writer. This immediately puts a lot of pressure on yourself to actually write something – I have a friend who has told all of her friends about the idea for my unwritten masterpiece and she periodically phones to assure me they’re all very excited about it and can’t wait to buy it at the shops. Also this often results in people telling you the Story of Their Life which you can then steal and use for your novel. Staying in a Bulgarian village once, I whimsically told the taxi driver I was a Writer and for days had locals coming over to the house in ones and twos to confide their innermost secrets…

Step two: Invest in a good black turtleneck.

Step three: Cover story. You will find, if you go round telling everyone you’re a writer that people will often promptly follow-up by asking ‘What is the novel about?’ Obviously don’t tell them what it’s actually about  - for one thing they’ll almost certainly steal your ace plot-line about a parallel universe where everyone has spoons for hands – for another this is not the appropriate arena to bring out your little darlings. You will discover that trying earnestly to explain your metaphysical reflection on the human soul to Auntie Karen over the tray of cocktail sausages on sticks is about as excruciating as impaling said cocktail sticks into your eyeballs. Also of course, they don’t actually care. Unless you really do prove to be ‘the next JK Rowling’ or until they’ve actually read your book, your friends and family will show a polite but feigned interest and it’s not kind to persist. Instead come up with a one-word vaguely threatening response which does not invite further comment – my friend successfully condensed her’s down to ‘The Holocaust’, for example.

Step four: Try very hard not to physically flinch whenever people say ‘Ooh are you going to be the next JK Rowling?” If you find this difficult try pretending to choke on the cocktail sausages the moment you sense the words coming on. (What do you mean what’s with the cocktail sausages? I’m just trying to set the scene. Look it up, amateur.)

Step five: Employ drastic measures to stop yourself procrastinating. Demosthenes the Greek Orator used to shave off half his hair so that he couldn’t leave the house, for shame, while Victor Hugo would get his Valet to hide all his clothes so the couldn’t go out. (To be honest if I had a valet I’d just make them write the book for me). This is also useful in helping to cultivate the Myth which you will need when you go professional. You know the ‘I can only write on yellow paper with red margins while standing upside down in my bathtub blah blah blah’ my favourite was a writer who claimed that he always wrote poetry with his left hand and prose with his right, because the left side of the brain was more creative.

Anyway that stuff is all part of the package so you better get on board.

Step six: Damage limitation. Occasionally you may find yourself in a social situation where you are introduced to someone who also claims to be a ‘writer’.  In this instance there can only be one winner.  Ensure it is you by tipping your head slightly to one side and saying ‘How interesting, have you had anything published?’ If they say no, permit yourself a slight sneer and kindly steer the conversation away from the topic to protect their tender feelings. If they say yes, and you discover you’re actually chatting to Tea Obreht or a similar vomit-inducing wunderkind, then bow out gracefully and get the hell out of there. If it is an older less depressing hero/ine then by all means suck up – they can later be pursued to write the scintillating blurb on your debut novel.

And that my dears is How to Be a Writer. I’d love to hear any additional suggestions!

DISCLAIMER:

*You do actually have to write stuff occasionally. Ah now I ruined it didn’t I?

** I have nothing against Tea Obreht. Youngest woman to win the Orange Prize. Good on her, I say…

A friend recently congratulated me on hosting a great film screening to raise money for a charity I work for.

‘Oh hardly any of that was me. I just have some really good friends,’ I said.

I wasn’t being falsely modest. The whole thing seemed to come together thanks to recommendations, suggestions and contacts from among my friendship group, who also turned up to support me on the night and told all their friends to come along too. All I did was show up in a dodgy pirate outfit and sell sweets on a stand (where it has to be said, I found my forte).

pics taken by my mate Graham / the official photographer  http://grussellphotography.com

The friend I was talking to told me she had recently got a new job after being recommended for the position by her old tutor and friend. The job wasn’t within her usual range of experience and most of the people there had specific qualifications she didn’t have. One day, feeling down after being unsuccessful in an internal promotion exercise (she has since got a great new job!)  she confessed that she felt she wasn’t good enough to work there,

‘The only reason I have this job in the first place is because I’m friends with you…’

To which her colleague (who I like to envisage as a wise Yoda-type mentor)  replied,

‘Yes of course, you’re completely right. The only reason you’re here is because a senior member of the team was familiar with your work and impressed enough to put his reputation on the line in recommending you, despite lacking the specific qualifications usually required’.

His point of course was that being helped out by your friends isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. Having friends who are willing to risk their reputation, go the extra mile for you, share their contacts, come straight to your event after work put on a daft Pirate hat and start DJ-ing, isn’t something you have nothing to do with, it’s something you should recognise and be proud of. These people are your network.

The word ‘networking’ makes me want to shrivel up and die. I’m convinced I can’t do it and if I’m honest, I don’t really want to – in my mind it’s associated with hard-eyed careerists whose eyes glaze over once they realise exactly how insignificant you are and then start to look over your shoulder while talking to you; the same people who state that they only check their emails twice a day, frequently ‘forget to eat’ lunch, and do angry yoga after work.

‘Friendworking’ is a term a friend of mine came up with when we were out for her birthday. Some of the people there worked in the industry I’d like to work in, so I said wanly that I supposed I’d have to ‘network’ with them, making networking sound something like amputating a limb. My friend was confused,

‘You’re really good with people though’.

‘Yeah but not networking, I can’t do networking.‘

Instead of telling me I was insane, because she is a good friend, she simply told me to forget about networking, be myself and try to make friends. By the end of the night I had an insight into working in the industry and several promises to come to my fundraiser. None of it had been forced or felt uncomfortable, and two weeks later they all actually came! Success!

Friendworking, the Rules:

1. Don’t exhaust your network. Sure your friends like you, but they don’t worship you (well, some of them might but then the kindest thing to do is leave them alone till they get over it) and they have a lot of other things to do. So try to spread out your ‘asks’ and recognise when you should try and do something by yourself, or get a professional.
2. Don’t lose friends. If you put enough pressure on people they’ll usually do what you want; whether they’ll still love you tomorrow is another matter. Be sensitive to your friend’s schedules and other commitments and don’t push too hard.
3. Don’t try to network. Don’t go into an event with a wishlist of people with skills/contacts you need, just go in wanting to make friends with people you get along with and enjoy spending time with. Be yourself!
4. Do talk about what you’re passionate about. Presumably you already do this with your friends, but sometimes it helps to spend some time thinking through what you actually want out of life. People have to know what you want before they can help you get it.
5. Recognise everyone has different strengths. I can guarantee that each one of your friends has something to offer you. Frankly, why would you be friends with them otherwise? They might not work in your industry or have any great contacts but they could know people who do, or be the sort of person you can call up late at night when you’re having a panic attack that your film licence isn’t going to come through in time, for example…
6. Be there for your friends. Friendworking goes both ways, that’s how it works. If your friends ask something of you, do your best to help them out. And don’t just use it as an opportunity to bring it back up the next time you ask a favour of them.
7. Try not to ask. First tell them about the project or goal, it’s an oft-forgotten fact that people like helping other people; we get a kick out of being useful – it’s been scientifically proven. So if you tell your friends enthusiastically all about your new project or career plans, it’s likely they’ll be tripping over themselves to offer ways in which they can assist you. Another option, which a friend of mine recently did, is write your goal online, in a blog post or Facebook note. Put the word out, and see what happens.
8. Always say thank you. Don’t take your friends for granted. They don’t have to help you! …Unless you have some incriminating childhood photos of them or something….

A really interesting interview with the lovely Jenn Ashworth (as seen on TV!)

An article about love and flat-pack furniture…

And an interview with Mark Charlesworth and Chris Newton about their new book Life Begins at Forty.

Enjoy!

I’ve been reminded about this connection between blog and audience recently as I was contacted by a hitherto-unknown relative who had happened across me while Googling our common ancestor George Morton Smith, the first royal correspondent.

Hi Daisy – I have been reading your blog(s) – very interesting person indeed. Anyway the reason I found your blog was researching my lovely wife’s grandfather – George Morton-Smith the Royal Corry. I find it amazing that my wife, like you, also won a creative writing prize and actually is employed sometimes by the local council to take creative workshops – MUST be in the genes.

It was a lovely experience connecting with a relative stranger and interesting to receive confirmation of something I had always intuited; that creative writing runs in the family.

I had a birthday last week and a good friend sent me a five pound note with her card.  Wanting to make the most of her gift and not to let it be absorbed into the imploding black-hole of my overdraft, I headed to the local charity shop intent of finding Something Interesting.

I ended up picking up an early edition of James Frey’s, A Million Little Pieces, complete with Oprah’s Book Club sticker and rave reviews:

“A heartbreaking memoir” Bret Easton Ellis

“…brutally candid memoir” Irish Sunday Independent

“Powerful and searingly self-critical… easily the most remarkable non-fiction book about drugs and drug taking since Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” Observer

All of which makes the book, in my mind, a small piece of modern art – because for those of you who don’t know, upon publication Frey’s ‘candid memoir’ was called into question and ultimately unveiled as a work of fiction.  Oprah disowned him and for a while it looked as though he would never work again. In recent times he has made an impressive comeback, but this copy of the book still tells its own tale and I look forward to reading it with this in mind.

I also bought a tote bag from the ‘Wellcome Collection; a free destination for the incurably curious’, which somehow in all the time I’ve been living in London I have never come across.  So my friend’s fiver further resulted in a happy Saturday spent exploring the exhibition ‘High Society’, a look at the place of drugs in Western culture.  We also enjoyed looking at Wellcome’s personal collection, which ranges from an artificial nose, torture chair and a lock of Napoleon Bonaparte’s hair to Florence Nightingale’s moccasins!  ‘High Society’ finished today but their next exhibition, ‘Dirt Season’ runs from 24^th March to 26^th September and looks equally entertaining.

Finally, just as I was about to leave the shop I spotted this:

Notes from Russia – Hand-made street notices, by Alexei Plutser-Sarno.

“This is a portrait of the Russian street told through its public notices.  They are pasted on everything – still or moving – notes for missing persons, love letters, political statements, job offers, complaints, and warnings.”

It’s not something that ordinarily I would have come across (nor, I suspect, been able to afford).  I opened one of the beautiful pages at random and read this:

I’m always with you! [1999]

It is as if the author is trying to convince himself that he is not completely lost in the void.

A lot like a blog.

On the inside page, written in a sparkly blue gel-pen which still glitters, are the words

“To Martha,

With a young lifetime’s worth of love,”

The book was published in 2007.  One can’t help but but be curious to know the rest of the story of Martha, the pristine book, and the young lifetime’s worth of love.

At least, I’m curious, and I hope some of you are too.

I’m on the job hunt at the moment, having recently moved down to London. As I suspected, while there are a lot more opportunities (especially in the arts) there are also a LOT more people.  So many people, in fact, that it all begins to feel a little hopeless.

It seems like every position advertised requires either years of experience in the field, or a diploma or GNVQ in various arcane subjects such as Museum Studies or Library Management.  It would help of course if I knew for certain that I wanted to work in Museum Studies or Library Management, then I could take the diploma or focus on getting the experience.  But as an arts graduate you seem to be qualified for everything and nothing and even choosing a direction to go in seems to take a long time.  I’m reminded of the passage in The Bell Jar where Esther sees herself in the fig tree, with each fig a perfectly plausible future life, only she cannot choose between them and as she sits in the tree the figs begin to rot and fall to the ground.

Of course a good way of deciding which career path to take is interning until you gain enough industry experience to decide.  Trouble is, in this country, they’re highly likely to be unpaid. Which brings me to my problem with internships – or internments, as my mother calls them in her unwittingly humorous way.  The culture of unpaid internships is one of the major roadblocks to social mobility in this country.  All graduates are not created equal – they are split between those with family who live in London and whose parents can afford to support them for six months to a year, and those who don’t.  Now this isn’t (honestly it isn’t!) a self-indulgent moan, I’m aware I’m in a better position that lots of people, but the system seems fundamentally unfair and it’s frustrating to see companies advertising unpaid intern positions when they should be offering paid jobs.  Recently I came across an advert for an ‘Administrative Intern’; the duties and responsibilities were identical to that of an Admin Assistant, with no demonstrable focus on gaining skills or personal development.

I realise of course that there are some companies, especially in the charitable sector, who cannot afford to pay their interns, but the culture of never paying interns is sad, it’s sad because the best people for the job aren’t getting the opportunity to try.  Of course there are rules and regulations about when you ought to be entitled to the minimum wage, but as a fellow candidate at an interview commented, where is your leverage to enforce these rules? If you ask to be paid there are thousands of people willing to take your place.

Jenn has written a great post over on her blog about money and how as a writer you need to ensure you get paid for your work.  I think it’s great that Jenn talks about the money side of the writing business, because generally people don’t – it’s almost considered rude I think because you should be doing it for the love of it, not monetary compensation.  But as Jenn says, surely we don’t think that only people who hate their job deserve to be paid?  The same thing works for interns, yes it’s a great opportunity, but when you’re contributing to a company’s profit margins, you should be getting paid.

Apart from lobbying for a change in the law, and making people aware of the issue, there doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do on an individual level.  With that in mind, and as I hear of more and more people taking on short term work to fund themselves through a couple of weeks work experience, it’s essential that you know exactly what you hope to gain from an internship experience.  Don’t lose sight of the fact that in lieu of pay, you really need to take personal responsibility for making sure your experience is valuable in the long term.  Reasonable expectations are

- Ask for a career mentor in the area in which you see yourself working.

- Insist on an exit interview summarising your strengths and weaknesses and areas for improvement.  This can be difficult in a busy environment but push for it and it will probably leave them with a positive impression of you as a driven, career-orientated individual.

- Try to pick up some names of contacts which you can approach for future job opportunities and even ask if they know anywhere hiring.  It’s a mistake to think that if your boss or supervisor is pleased with your work they’ll go out of their way to try and help you out – they’re busy people and you’re one in a long line of office ghosts who have traipsed the corridors in identical Zara office attire and oversized glasses. Ensure you make clear you are looking for work and would appreciate any help they can give you.

While ‘researching’ this post (one month in London and I’ve gone all professional) I came across InternAware; a campaign focusing on promoting fair access to the internship system which provides a comprehensive overview.

Let me know what you think about this!

Next post, how to be an impoverished writer, a humorous tale.

Yes, I’ve sold out, I’ve moved on, I’m living beyond my means in North London, near enough to Euston station to jump on a train to Preston if it all gets too scary.  I’m slowly exploring my new surroundings.  My new neighbourhood is Turkish, Greek Cypriot, Polish, Lebanese and Caribbean.  There’s a Happening Beigel Bakery on the corner,  The Best Greek Music Shop in the World EVER!!! down the road and a vegan cafe across the park.  There is an advertising board by the railway bridge which has been slapped with a line of Turkish SOSYALIZM posters and along the bottom of the board someone has written ‘British Soldiers Raped Iraqi Prisoners’ in green marker pen.  There are baseball and softball pitches in the park and today people were playing Lacrosse in the rain.  There are troops of modish Indie boys trailing guitars and doffing top hats, on their way to the Big Time and cliques of spindly schoolgirls in ballet pumps who sound like East End gangsters but who apologise profusely if they happen to bump into you.  There’s a Polish Food aisle in the local Sainsbury’s which seems fairly redundant given the amount of Polish shops in the vicinity.  Today every single one of the magazines offering a free lipgloss had been slit open and stolen (Except the one we found, slipped in behind Take A Break like a gift.)

The novelty of being able to buy habaneros and plantain at my local shop still hasn’t worn off, nor has the shock of being able to buy *anything* past 6.30.   This is London!  There’s less homeless people than in Oxford, more green space than in Manchester, less catcalling than in Nicaragua but more than in Kirkham and a family of urban foxes in next door’s garden.  It’s already beginning to feel like home…

I am of course missing my peeps up North and I was very happy to hear Little Bird Stories was nominated for the Manchester Blog Awards! Vote HERE for Holly, a lovely blog by a lovvvely gal

The dissertation, 15000 creative words, is in the hands of the Gods – well, the tutors.

After feeling I’d gotten everything under control, (having reached the designated word count unusually early), I discovered that university guidelines state that you must have your name and subject in gold lettering on the spine.

Spine?  I’ve written something long enough to have a spine? Go me! ….But how does one achieve the requisite gold lettering?  Turns out not a lot of places do gold lettering.  Huh.  I guess I’ll just write it on with gold pen.  Ohhh they actually specify that writing in gold pen is not acceptable and will lead to the dissertation being refused.  Those poor souls who went before me.

Manchester has a couple of gold-lettering options but I really don’t want to go all the way there and queue for hours with other neurotic postgrads (anxious people make me anxious).  I phone my local printers, Grantham’s in Preston, and they say there’s only one man in the whole area who will do gold lettering on the spine. ONE man.  How do I find this man, I ask?  He works in the middle of a park, in an arts and crafts workshop, where he earns his living as a traditional bookbinder.

And so I ventured into the woods in search of gold lettering.  It was all very fairytale-like and Peter did an awesome job.

And then I took the train to Manchester, walked down Oxford Road for possibly the last time and handed it over to a guy in the office who didn’t even *glance* at the gold lettering and said, ‘Okay, now you’re done.’ I stood there, in disbelief until he said  ’Really, you’re done.  Finished.  Go and enjoy yourself.’

So that’s mostly what I’ve been doing.

YOB SMASHED VEHICLE MIRROR

A vandal broke the wing mirror off a parked car.

The incident happened at around 5.30 am on Sunday in Gregson Lane, Hoghton, near Preston.  The offender ran off without being seen.

BICYCLE STOLEN

An unlocked pedal cycle was stolen from outside a home in Penwortham, near Preston.

The incident happened between 3am and 4am on Sunday in Gleneagles Drive, in the town.

TV LICENCE CHEAT FINED

A woman was fined £175 for using a TV without a licence.

——, 34, of Wiseman Close, Morecambe, admitted using the colour TV at her home when she appeared before Lancaster magistrates.  She must also pay £60 costs and £15 victims surcharge.

My challenge to you is to make these stories newsworthy! Who stole the unlocked pedal cycle? Did someone perhaps look out of their window in the early hours of the morning and catch a glimpse of the offender who broke the car wing mirror??

Interestingly ‘Psyblog’  (which looks very intriguing) suggests it takes, on average, 66 days to form a new habit.  Consider me reformed.

My latest reads have been A L Kennedy’s ‘What Becomes’ and Ali Smith’s ‘The First Person and Other Stories’.  Interesting that while one grandstands the fact that this a collection of stories, the other hides it.  It’s as if publishers feel they have to slip short stories in like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I’m really enjoying both of these and I’ve noticed myself reading them differently to how I would read a novel.  In my initial #100days post I said

I wonder if this is actually the reason short stories are less commercial?  Perhaps people read for escapism, and you can never really escape into a short story; you only get a glimpse into another world, not the world itself.

and in ‘True Short Story’ Ali Smith quotes Tzvetan Todorov making a similar, albeit more elegant, point:

the thing about a short story is that it’s so short it doesn’t allow us the time to forget that it’s only literature and not actually life.

I’d been seeing this as a potential criticism of short stories when in fact it’s their great strength.  It allows you to appreciate and value the language, the images, the powerful evocation of emotion which would become tiring, even boring, in the extended form of a novel.

In Kennedy’s story ‘What Becomes’ we hear the internal monologue of Frank, who is suffering after the death of their child  has sent him and his wife into separate hells.  Here he imagines what he wants to say to his wife,

And, beyond this, I know you’re sad.  I know your days are bleeding, too.  And I know I make you sad.  I don’t understand how not to, but please don’t bring in more of the grief, don’t add to it.  If there is more, then I won’t be able to breathe and I’ll die.

This is silent pain enunciated and there is no need to extend it to fill a novel, everything is already said, or critically, left unsaid.  This is the crystalisation of a broken heart and it is perfectly suited to the short story form.

Smith’s story, ‘The Third Person’ begins,

Short stories long.

Which is a beautiful first sentence, and accurate too:  Short stories long to continue, we desire to stay in the world of the story and find out what happens to the characters.  In this story Smith purposefully plays with this idea and skips between unconnected characters and settings so that we only get the briefest glimpse of these people and are left wondering what happened next…

‘This one is about two people who have just gone to bed together for the first time.  It’s autumn.  They met in summer.  Since they met they’ve been working up to this with a sense of unavoidability; less a courtship, more as if they’ve found themselves in a a very small room, a room small enough to feel overcrowded with two people in it, and this room also has a grand piano in it.  It doesn’t matter where they’ve been or what they’ve been doing – meeting each other by chance in the street, walking down the road, going to a cinema, sitting a table in a pub – it’s as if they’re in a tiny room and in there with them, massive, ever-present as an old fashioned chaperone, awkward and glossy and unmentionable as a coffin, the grand piano.  To move at all in this room means having to squeeze into the narrow space between the wall and the side of the piano.  The inside of it, under the lid, is a structure of wires and hammers a bit like the underframe of a bed of a harp that’s been laid on its side.

They’ve done it, they’ve shrugged themselves out of their shy clothes at last, they’ve slipped in under the covers of a small double bed, they’re holding each other in nothing but skin.  One of them even has quite a bad cold and the other doesn’t care.  Ah, love.  Outside the trees are quiet.  The light is coming down.  It’s five in the evening.  But enough about them.’

And that’s it, she moves on to another tale.  What a tease!  It’s a fascinating example of how quickly, under what little provocation, we as readers become engaged with characters.  We have read two paragraphs – most of which has been spent describing a metaphorical piano and the weather, the time of year and other arbitrary details – yet we already feel we know these people and long to know more.

At the end of ‘What Becomes’, Frank’s wife asks what’s wrong with him,

And Frank couldn’t tell her because he didn’t know and so he just said, ‘I understand why people look at fountains, or at the sea.  Because they don’t stop.  The water moves and keeps on moving, the tide withdraws  and then returns and it keeps on going and keeps on.  It’s like -’ he could hear her shifting, feel her sitting up, but not reaching for him. ‘It’s like that button you get on stereos, on those little personal players – there’s always the button that lets you repeat – not just the album, but the track, one single track.  They’ve anticipated you’ll want to repeat one track over and over, so those three or four minutes can stay, you can keep that time steady in your head, roll it back, fold it back.  They know you’ll want that.  I want that.  Just three or four minutes that come back.’

There is, Kennedy suggests, an innate human desire to cling on, to resist change and avoid endings.  Short stories, in not allowing you the time to forget that this is impossible, are not comforting in the sense that novels can be, but perhaps William Carlos Williams (as quoted by Smith) is right to say they are

the flare of a match struck in the dark, [...] the only real form for describing the briefness, the brokenness and the simultaneous wholeness of people’s lives.

which is kind of lovely and definitely what this blog is, if nothing else.

Rules state that I have to share some things about myself and link to some other versatile bloggers.

I was struggling to think of  anything one could wish to know about me, until the other day, while browsing a typically cool shop in Manchester with a typically cool Manchester friend we found a big book full of blank pages called ‘My Life Story’ which sort of freaked us out.  But it reminded me of a book I have just retrieved from under my bed (it will shortly be being concealed in a more secure location) called ‘All About Me’, which I bought when I was 19 while in Texas visiting friends.

We all bought one of these from Urban Outfitters

and filled them in together.  It’s basically a lot of questions you have to answer, like those little chain notes girls used to pass around in class.  Reading it now, four years later, has been pretty hilarious. I didn’t think I’d changed much in that time, but reading back it seems like a lifetime ago.  So I’m (bravely) going to share some of my About Me answers – updated when necessary…

A smell that makes you pause: Tea tree

A taste that makes you melt: Cinnamon

A flower you would like to grow in your garden: Bluebells

A film you could watch over and over: The Notebook – I see I have originally written Lost in Translation and crossed it out. I have no answers for any of you, but modern-day me would reinstate LIT obviously.

An artist whose work you highly respect: Edward Hopper / Camille Claudelle

Your cologne or perfume: Cacherel Amor Amor This dates me.  Wow. I think I find this more embarrassing than The Notebook, although I really shouldn’t. Now – Diptyque Philosykos but much as I like smelling like a man who’s rolled around in figs, for my next purchase I have a craving for Narciso Rodriguez For Her.

On your wall hangs: Razorlight and Orlando Bloom posters and a Japanese wall hanging. The Japanese print has survived… Along with a Zelda Fitzgerald Save Me The Waltz poster, a photograph of Louise Brooks, some old perfume ads, Chagall’s lovers in flight and a bunny calendar.

If you didn’t know your mother, which famous person would you choose to be your mother: Goldie Hawn – how fun would that be? Pretty fun!

A friend you would like to kiss: Adam.  I GENUINELY have no idea who this is. Adam are you out there? Did we kiss? Did it destroy our obviously strong friendship??

Three sounds that disturb you: *fingernails on paper *fingers on velvet *teeth on peach skin Ewwwwww

Three things you would never do: I don’t think you ever know what you are capable of until the moment occurs. Sage, if a little ominous.

The menu for your last dinner might be, Appetizer: salad verte avec chevre chaud, Main Course: terriyaki salmon, Dessert: apple tarte tatin. Fancy! Nowadays I think I’d cook up a bunch of Mexican food.

Someone or something that made you laugh this week: Mel from work said I looked like Princess Diana with my new hairstyle! (Unfortunately she wasn’t the last.)

You don’t have a lot of: Warm clothes, jumpers. Still true.

A plan or project you worry will fail: My degree! I don’t seem to enjoy anything I have to read – surely this isn’t a good sign? No, it wasn’t.  But we got there in the end…

An intellectual ability that you find attractive: emotional intelligence

A personality trait that you find attractive: Exuberance!

A physical trait you find attractive: Brown eyes

You are irritated when people ask you: If I’m doing English because I want to be a teacher. Still irritating!

Your secret passion: Cheese.

If you were a beverage or cocktail you would be: Appletiser -sweet, bubbly and very good for you! And one of your five-a-day? Bless, I don’t think I would make it on to Blind Date.

Then there are two pages where you’re supposed to spontaneously write Likes and Dislikes.  The likes fill the entire page (amor amor perfume makes an appearance) and the dislikes runs thus:

Maths, pretentious people, Victorian Literature.

Hear hear.

And if anyone’s still taking recommendations from me, here are some other Versatile Bloggers I enjoy:

BTW : WTF? From the mind of Lex, who’s about to bring back his controversial musings on life. Watch this space.

Little Bird Stories The lovely Holly finds the good in life. And she just unveiled my blog nickame, exciting!

Every Day I Lie A Little Jenn’s new blog is lush. I enjoyed this recent post.

Contrariwise Still a big fan of the literary tattoos blog.  Not updated regularly but fascinating when it is.

Liebemarlene Vintage This is a great blend of thrifty fashion, tales from the South, recipes, reading suggestions and more.

Notorious Female My delectable lovely Maegan in Chennai, blogging about her year’s job working for an independent Indian publishing house.  I taught her everything she knows.

I Swim Chapati Genius Griselda’s thoughts on art, theatre, literature and India.

Ta ta for now peeps, I’m off to watch The Notebook….

What would your answers be?