Seven things

Zoe has tagged me to do the seven facts about myself meme. Thank you Zoe. I like reading these about other people so although I'm not sure there is anything new to say about me here goes.

My father was in the RAF. He was killed in a flying accident when I was three. My brother was just twelve months old and my mother was twenty four.

When I was eleven we emigrated to New Zealand, my mother having remarried. We stayed until I was seventeen and I would love to go back and look at it again as an adult. Although we didn't have very much money it was a great outdoor life. Sometimes I wonder if that time accounts for tendency to take my cup of tea outside, to the amusement of my family, as long as there is the slightest hint of warmth. Wrong hemisphere now perhaps.

I trained as an inspector of taxes (don't do it now, don't panic). A colleague of mine was once investigating the tax affairs of a large, aggressive Northern comedian. When he turned up at his house to interview him, the comedian opened the door dressed only in baggy underpants and a string vest and the entire interview was conducted with my firend sitting nervously on the edge of his seat and the comedian lying on the couch in his underwear smoking, drinking beer and belching noisily. I suspect the result was comedian 1, Inland Revenue 0.

I can still adopt the Lotus position but I have never been able to touch my toes.

I can do a lot of things quite badly (for example sailing , speaking French, reading music). This used to bother me but the older I have got the more I am inclined to think that my younger self's desire not to engage with anything I couldn't do well is a real mistake. If the choice is between doing something badly and not doing it at all, doing it badly can be fine. I have however accepted that there are some things I won't do now: skiing and ice skating for example. If I wanted to do them enough I would already have learnt. There is not enough of life left to spend quite so much time falling down.

I live an awful lot in my head. This is both good and bad: good because you always have something to think about and you can use your thinking to help you to find a way to deal with the rubbish life throws at you from time; bad because sometimes action and not thinking are the better ways to cope. It does however mean that you are never alone.

I love olives and lavender so how come I am living on a Welsh hillside instead of a valley in Provence?

I am supposed to tag other people but I am pretty sure that we have covered most of us by now so I would just invite anyone who would like to give this a go to consider themselves tagged.