I got this from AB and Charlotte, and as I really really need a break…

1. Explain what ended your last relationship

Assuming you mean the one before the one I’m currently in, which, ah ha ha, hasn’t ended, a marriage proposal. To whit: ‘If you married me, you wouldn’t have to go to University.’ At which point I decided someone clearly hadn’t been listening to a word I had said ever, and left.

3. What were you doing at 8am today?

Taking a shower.

4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago?

Biting my nails and glowering at The Novel.

5. Are you any good at maths?

To this day, I have to do mental arithmetic on my fingers. Or a piece of paper. The numbers just won’t stay still and let me do things to them. I was unexpectedly good at trig and algebra, briefly, when I was sixteen, which is why I have a maths GCSE at all.

6. Your prom night?

I did have a Sixth Form Disco. Will that do? (Spent it ‘looking after’ a very (illicitly, natch) drunk friend who had just seen her boyfriend snogging someone distinctly other than herself. I looked marvellous for nothing. Arse).

7. Do you have any famous ancestors?

I am allegedly distantly related via the second-cousin-twice-removed-once-met-his-hair-dresser way to both Freud and Mendelssohn. On the other hand, my husband is a direct descendant of Mr and Mrs Andrews.

8. Did you have to take out a loan for university?

I was the last, the very last, year of British students to get grants. And I got a bursary to do my MA. So I have been a revoltingly lucky young woman. Mind you, considering how ragged and impecunious my career has been since, I think I rather deserved the break.

9. Do you know the words to the song on your Myspace profile?

What is this MySpace of which you speak?

10. Last thing received in the mail?

Gas bill. Enormous gas bill. The excitement never starts.

11. What beverages have you had today?

Tea. Apple juice. Tea. Coffee. Water. Complicated hippy herbal tea designed to soothe shredded nerves. It isn’t working. that is why I have gagged and bound the Editor and am doing this instead of The Novel.

12. Do you leave messages on people’s answering machines.

On the second or third try. My first, almost unconquerable instinct, on getting someone’s answering machine, is to slam the phone down in panic. Stage-fright, I think.

13. Whom did you lose your CONCERT virginity to?

My Dad took me to see Don Giovanni at the ENO when I was fifteen. What do you mean, that doesn’t count?

14. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?

Nope. I look for pretty pebbles and poke about in inhabited rock-pools.

15. What is the most painful dental procedure you have ever had?

Having the entire roof of my mouth sliced open to fish out an errant eye-tooth. Admittedly it was under general anaesthetic, and the worst of the pain was the immense and terrifying soreness of my throat (scarlet, and horribly swollen) and neck muscles when I came round. Apparantly both caused by having an oxygen tube jammed right down there and then having my head turned practically back on itself so the dentist could get at the roof of my mouth with said tube in the way. I’m not entirely sure I’m glad the nurse told me ALL that, but I was demanding to know what was wrong with me in hoarse and hysterical sobs and getting on the other patients’ nerves.

16. What is out your back door?

My front door used to be someone-else’s back door. We look right out at a narrow tarmacked yard, a brick wall, and two parked cars. Mmm, urban blight.

17. Any plans for Friday night?

Gin. Novel. Write write writewritewrite. Swear. More gin. Try and make lead character more fanciable. Refuse to cook. Refuse to do anything. Retire to the sofa in high dudgeon and watch junk telly.

18. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair?

My hair is deeply untidy enough as is. Once the ocean has been at it it takes two strong men and a bottle of tranquillisers to comb it.

19. Have you ever received one of those big tins with three different kinds of popcorn?

And there I was thinking popcorn came in two kinds - greasy salt and sticky beige.

20. Have you ever been to a planetarium?

No. I have gone star-gazing with people In The Know and their marvellous telescopes though.

21. Do you re-use towels after you shower?

Excuse me, but just how much hot water and soap and electricity do you suppose I can afford to lavish on washing towels five or six times a week? And anyway, having showered, I tend to feel I am not reducing said towel to such an abject condition of filth that it would need urgent washing. Just saying.

22. Some things you are excited about

Books. And the very first flowers in Spring. And thunder-storms. Shakespeare. And going to the theatre. And snow. And kissing. One of my best afternoons ever - going to watch Shakespeare rehearsals in a theatre in the middle of a thunder-and-lightening blizzard and stopping to kiss by a flower-bed. In March. While holding an armful of books. Ooh, yeah.

23. Your favourite Jello flavour

Ew. On the other hand, my favourite jelly is my mother’s home-made elderflower and champagne. So bloody there.

24. Describe your key chain

Absolutely plain metal ring, containing three unmarked keys. The post-box, the gate, the front door. My husband’s on the other hand, has the keys to at least three houses we no longer live in on it and could be used to concuss a yak in mid-charge.

25. Where do you keep your change?

All over the kitchen table.

26. What winter coat do you own?

A big black fake sheep-skin one in serious need of laundering and new buttons. A new waterproof with removable fleece lining. When it’s not cold enough for those, I improvise with an assortment of cardigans and/or shawls. Because I like attracting mildly puzzled stares on public transport.

27. What was the weather like on your graduation day?

Blazingly sunny, very windy, and hot. I could feel myself cooking inside my robes and my mortar-board kept blowing off and my hood kept wrapping itself lovingly around my head and trying to suffocate me. In every single photo, I look pink, untidy and flustered.

28. Do you sleep with your bedroom door open or closed?

Closed. I am a bit phobic about open bedroom doors. When in a strange bedroom, I even have to sleep on the side of the bed furthest from the door. So the demented axe-wielding monster can get my husband first. Who said chivalry was dead?

Posted by Reed on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 5:20 pm.