Ten things about me you didn't necessarily know before and maybe didn't want to

I hear your questions, your burning desire to know more. Who is the person behind that fascinating letter? you ask. It's about time I did an About Me post. (Yes, it's also about time I did a Series Spotlight post, being Thursday and all, but I'm finding it hard choosing a series. This was much more fun to write.)

So I present...

Ten Things About Me That You Didn't Necessarily Know Before And Maybe Didn't Want To

1. I have a pair of orange neon shoes. They are hideous.


2. When I told my mum I might start reviewing books, she laughed a lot. ‘Why not?’ I demanded. ‘You couldn’t even keep a book log,’ she pointed out. This is true but I wasn’t going to concede defeat. ‘I could if I WANTED to,’ I said. At primary school we had about half an hour reading to start off the day, reading anything we wanted. Then fifteen minutes to write in our book log our THOUGHTS and IMPRESSIONS. What might happen next. Er, how about I forego pointless exercise writing about what I think could happen next, and use the fifteen minutes READING MORE OF THE BOOK and finding out!? So I did. Then I mean really, what’s the point in writing about it after I’ve finished? I could be STARTING A NEW BOOK! I never wrote in my book log ever. My teacher never noticed. I’m actually not sure how my mum knew. I probably told her as a very smug ten year old.


3. I’ve never drawn on my shoes. I feel I’ve missed an important rite of passage for every teenager. Everyone in teen lit seems to have a pair of beat-up converse that someone has drawn on. This must be where I’ve been going wrong all these years.


4. I giggled a lot when I was sorting out the interview for Luisa Plaja. Not were we Extreme Emailing right up until I posted it, but I googled her name to see what else was out there and make sure that what I was posting hadn’t been done before. On the first page, I saw the same quote twice for two websites. It looked familiar. Did I write that? Maybe. I can’t remember. I click to check. Yes I did, and one of the websites is a bookseller website. My quote is listed under ‘what the critics say.’ This is so very cool, both that I’m quoted, and that I’m a ‘critic.’ I guess I am one, but you know, it’s cool to be referred to as one.


5. My spell check tells me that my grammar above is wrong. It shouldn’t be ‘I’m a critic,’ but ‘I are a critic.’ I think I ARE A CRITIC should be my new tagline. It should also be on a T-shirt.


6. It is no coincidence that there is a cup of tea in my profile photo. I love tea. My friend and I are almost single-handedly upholding the stereotype of English tea-drinkers. Though not from dainty teacups with doilies. Or with crumpets. Just the tea.


7. I think maybe I’ll cover the neon shoes with fabric paint. It might make me look like a walking paint-pot explosion, but at least I could wear them.


8. My grandparents owned a narrow boat. I grew up spending part of my holiday every year on the canals. I really recommend it. The feeling of lying on top of a narrow boat with a book and the sun so strong that it makes the paint you’re lying on almost too hot to touch and the sound of the motor chugging along and the very slow movement? One of my favourite things EVER.


9. Also, I’ve never fallen in. My middle brother (the incredibly competitive one) has. This makes me happy. This in turn makes me a bad person :)


10. When I was about eight, I learned the piano. One week, the teacher told me off for not practicing even though I had (probably not enough, but I DID.) A few weeks later, I didn’t practice. At all. In my lesson, she praised me and said she could tell I’d tried really hard with the piece. I was disgusted and from then on convinced that practicing achieved no result whatsoever. It was just a form of torture that parents and piano teachers dreamed up to keep kids out of the way. Needless to say, I am not a pianist today.