Friday, April 28, 2006

Go on, you know you want to

I got this irresistible meme from Cristy who got it from susoz who got it from WEG. Considering the alphabet is my fundamental code in life (see Unusual Skill or Talent), it makes a lot of sense as a life sketch.

Accent: What a friend once called Standard Australian University English Department. He has it too, so he didn't mean it as an insult. Once, when I'd been teaching in Melbourne for some years, I was correctly identified by accent as a South Australian -- by a profoundly deaf student who'd been lip-reading my lectures.

Booze: Relatively small amounts of really lovely booze. Heineken in a beer mood; G&T when it's hot; lovely South Australian wine, especially eccentric white varietals like pinot grigio and verdelho, and a couple of the local red fizzies -- Fox Creek Vixen and d'Arenberg's Peppermint Paddock, yum. UPDATE: how did I manage to leave out champagne white bubbles and single malt Scotch?

Chore I hate: Cleaning the bath and shower.

Dog or cat: Cat (der), but I also quite like (some) dogs, and I adore Border Collies.

Essential electronics: Computer.

Favourite cologne(s): Chanel No. 5, but I think of it as a 'fragrance'. I used to wear Tuscany, Beautiful and Knowing, but I think it was more about names than smell.

Gold or silver: I have to choose?

Hometown: Curramulka, South Australia, pop. approx 100.

Insomnia: Almost never, thank God.

Job title: Freelance writer and independent scholar.

Kids: None. A matter of leaving it too late and not being sufficiently organised, sufficiently ruthless or sufficiently intelligent about partner selection. Fortunately I don't regard my uterus as my defining organ.

Living arrangements: Untidy.

Most admirable trait: Either reliability or sense of humour, though you'd think they'd be mutually exclusive.

Number of sexual partners: Heh.

Overnight hospital stays: At least five or six. I've been around for quite a while now, and bodies wear out just like everything else.

Phobias: Used to be mildly phobic about moths. All my other fears are, alas, all too rational.

Quote: Depends on the day. I've always liked E.M. Forster's 'Separate those people who will hurt each other the most', and was once able to avert a major public social disaster on the strength of it.

Religion: I did a quiz once that said my world view made me half Buddhist and half Quaker. I actively dislike organised religion of any kind but have great reverence for ritual, so I probably respect religious observance more than others who dislike it less -- how convoluted is that? I do have a highly developed sense of the numinous, and of the spirituality of the non-human (animals, landscape). The Bloke calls me an animist, which is probably about right.

Siblings: Two sisters, one on either chronological side. I'm grateful for this because it meant I was raised as a person, not as 'the girl' or 'one of the girls'; I also regret it, because if I'd had a brother or two, I might have made fewer idiotic mistakes in life about men.

Time I wake up: When I've had enough sleep.

Unusual talent or skill: Proofreading. I'm very responsive to typography and all things alphabetical and punctuation-related, and was taught to proofread properly (line by line backwards, with a ruler and another person reading aloud including all the punctuation and spacing) by an old-school ex-Age journo called Hume Dow who used to work with George Johnston and Charmian Clift.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: None, if it would be rude.

Worst habit: Internet addiction

X-rays: Teeth, various girly bits, cervical spine (high-speed highway rollover, very nasty)

Yummy foods I make: Osso buco with gremolata and buttery mash; de luxe potato salad with homemade mayo; fresh cherry and toasted almond ice cream once every summer; Jane Grigson's OTT trifle with red summer fruits, syllabub topping and three different kinds of alcohol.

Zodiac sign: Taurus. I once went to see an astrologer ('There's a gypsy down on Bleecker Street / I went in to see her as a kind of joke' -- Joni Mitchell) who'd done my chart before the appointment, and when I arrived at her house there was a plateful of florentines from Acland Street and Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. Tragic to be so predictable, even to an astrologer.

7 comments:

cristy said...

So much more thorough than mine that it makes me want to do it all over again. I will, instead, do some work.

I particularly like the religion part. I thought about answering that more thoroughly - ie that I identify most closely with Quakerism, etc. but didn't want to get into a long discussion with my grandparents (who read my blog...).

Anonymous said...

It's the meme du jour. Also far more thorough than mine. Quakerism vaguely appeals to me as well. The more I learn about the actual doctrinal parts of Buddhism the less I like it.

Anonymous said...

The proofreading sounds useful. Cool.
Though as an historical note, I'm a stickler against the word 'typographic': there hasn't been typography since the days of hot lead, galleys and linotyped line art.
These days we all make our mistakes honestly misspelling, with teh foolish keying errors and (best of all) with processing errors, which are the fault of the fucking computer.
Of course.

cristy said...

In that case Liam, Ampersand Duck could still make a typographic error, no?

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Liam, yes, I remembered your previous post (to LP?) about typography and I'm sure you're right -- I just couldn't think of an all-in-one word that would embrace typography plus 'keying' or whatever. My adult awareness of these things (like many of my books) goes back well pre-computer -- 'the days of hot lead' etc aren't all that far back in the mists of time!

Yep, I thought of A. Duck myself, Cristy, when I read Liam's post.

geoff said...

What if the Vegetables are a soggy mush and unrecognisable? I knda like to have an idea of what i am eating.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for reminding me of Grigson. I am sure I have that very recipe in the kitchen...

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