I've been tagged to provide seven unusual facts about myself. I can't promise they'll be unusual or even interesting so you can blame Dave for this post!
1) I play the guitar, admittedly not much over the last couple of years but I will drag it out of its case one of these days.
2) I have a nearly-two-year-old son called Sorley. Actually his name on the birth certificate is Somerled after the great Norse/Celtic warrior, but Sorley is the pet name for Somerled so we call him Sorley. It means my husband got his warrior name and I got my poet name (I just wasn't going to agree to Spartacus or Conan!).
3) I once met Edwin Morgan and could think of nothing to say to him. I had won a poetry competition of which he was the judge, it was announced during a show at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance. I was so stunned when they read out my name that I just sat in my seat wondering what I was supposed to do. Eventually I found my way onto the stage, shook Morgan's hand and just kind of looked at him. I'd barely even read any of his poetry at that time. Now that I'm a big fan of his work I feel a bit of an idiot when I think back.
4) I have a masters in philosophy. I loved spending a year around mad-cap philosophers but it's no use for getting a job!
5) Before I went to uni I spent two years working in a smoked salmon factory in the middle of nowhere (at the head of a loch, surrounded by hills). From quarter-to-eight to quarter-to-five standing in a chilled room slicing and bagging smoked salmon, with two half hour breaks spent in a porta-cabin. At one point I thought I'd never get out of that place, it was full of witchy fish-wives. There was a lot of camaraderie as well though - planting fish-heads in peoples lockers and wellies etc oh and plenty of food fights!!
6) I met my husband when I was 15, we secretly got engaged on my 16th birthday and married a week after my 18th, this December will be our 13th wedding anniversary.
7) I believed that seahorses were fictional animals until I was sixteen. It was amazing to find out they really exist, they still seem to me like something out of a fairytale!
I'm supposed to tag seven more people but instead I'm going to leave it open for everyone or anyone who wants to take up the challenge.
21 comments:
Some great details here. When you write that life story way off in the future it will have some great chapters! The romantic courtship, the fish, the poetic triumphs...
Have you written a poem about the food fights in the fish factory? Could be a nice dramatic (maybe even funny...) one. Working title 'Philosopher in the fish factory'?
I have a friend who called his son Conan! The child is half Bangladeshi/British and half Irish.
re 5) - it wasn't rannoch by any chance?
There's some pretty romantic stuff in their Sorlil - perhaps not the fish head bit, but...
Oh shug - some people will do anything to attract attention! What were you doing drowning with a librarian anyway?
Hi Sorlil. Thanks to Dave for sprinkling some breadcrumbs in your direction. Looking forward to browsing your writing.
hi rachel, hmmm a poem about slapping people about with fish! I can't do funny poems, a skill I am, alas, without!
bard shug, you are a shocker, MacDiarmid must be turning in his grave! What I want to know is what did you do to that poor bear?!
hi swiss, no it was loch fyne, I've got lots of crazy stories from my time out there!
hi frances, the fish head was left in the locker on a friday, you really can't imagine the smell that greeted us the following monday morning!
hi maekitso, thanks for popping in.
No bear was harmed in the making of that story. I was dumping a bag of empty beer bottles in a skip when it stood up at the other end with a large cardboard box in its mouth. I wrote a poem about it called 'what you think before you get eaten by a bear'
Are you sure it was a bear? After all the beer...maybe your faculties were disturbed?
Rachel it is clear that you've never been attacked by a bear. Instantly your senses sharpen, it's as if the 16 pints of Guinness with plum brandy chasers had never happened.
Now if only we could get that on YouTube.
Your life sounds unbelievably interesting. This is a memoir in itself, all drama and romance. And philosophy. And seahorses.
Wow, that really is interesting. Film it?
"Now if only we could get that on YouTube" - do you mean being attacked by the bear or the 16 pints of guinness?
"all drama and romance" - lol, if only!
I deleted my post cos I had no right to be rampaging over your post with my squalid observations. I'll resurrect them in Mutterings.
Apologies.
(With some awkward shuffling of feet the Bard of Penpont left the room.)
(pursued by a bear)
I was very doubtful about this meme business until recently, you've convinced me that it can uncover some fascinating stuff.
I don't know how old I was when I discovered sea horses were more real than Father Christmas, but it was after I had tumbled him.
I don't blame you for sticking out against Spartacus!
Thanks for turning up trumps.
I guessed it might be Loch Fyne. I always read the flyleaf notes on authors, and they always list interesting jobs, like logging, fish-packing and so on. I definitely missed out, but I was a barman in interesting places, met interesting people, before my library career started.
shug, I'm still trying to work out which, if any of them, are actually true!
hi dave, thanks, sparatacus was one of the better suggestions, you really don't want to know what the other were!
hi colin, I wouldn't say you missed out! Certainly I've never met people quite like the folk I used to work with but that's no bad thing, lol!
by strange coincidence one of the people i'm working with just now worked in the rannoch smokery and was regaling me with tales from the fish shed just the other week
yes there are many of us out there spreading our traumatised (fish) tales/tails
that's so interesting and funny, sorlil - the seahorses thing is a fairytale in itself :-)
[thank you for telling me that, you are so sweet!]
thanks roxana, glad you enjoyed reading it!
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