MEME or ME-ME-ME

I have been tagged by Jane to write about myself - hence I presume the word ‘meme’ (Me-Me!). As usual I have written too much. I’ve tagged a few others below. I’ve included for fun a couple of husband and wife pairs.

What are your current obsessions?

In days gone by, no variety performance was complete without the man who put dinner plates on a high vertical wire and spun them around. The gyroscopic effect enabled them to defy gravity; the plate thus stayed balanced on the wire. Or not as the case may be. Clearly the object was to see just how many plates and wires could be erected, the performer continually having to rush around rescuing the early plates as they slowed and began to wobble, giving them a deft flick, that would ensure another minute or two of life.

Being self-employed, running a business, house and garden and with a variety of voluntary interests like UNESCO and acting, my life often resembles that sea of plates. I am governed by a long to-do list and its complement of unremitting deadlines. In the background is the constant need to manage cash - will there be enough in the bank to pay for the stock orders this month? By how much will expenditure increase next year? How much do I need to earn from writing? What can be fitted into the day? When can I learn my lines? Let’s move this to the evening - do that on the train; get up early to do the other. And so on. Those plates are my obsessions.

What are you listening to?

Radio 4, when I’m not doing something that requires concentration. I love the midnight news. Classic FM, if I’m reading in the evenings.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?

If the government really wanted to reduce carbon emissions, and to generate employment, they would give me a grant towards replacing my 20 year old central heating boiler such that the fuel savings would pay the net cost within a couple of years or so. They could reclaim the money afterwards by charging me more tax - which they will do anyway - but presumably my ongoing fuel savings would be enough to pay this. We should all then benefit: me, the climate and the government.

As it is I can’t afford the investment to raise the efficiency of my boiler from 60 per cent to 90 per cent. So I have to reduce my heating and wear more clothes, which brings us to my most worn wardrobe garment. Which is a padded gilet: my Christmas charity shop present from Younger Daughter in 2007. I still wear it almost every day. It cost £5 and the cost per wear must have been reduced by now to about twopence.

First spring thing?

I’ve always been a country person. Though born in a city I grew up on a small farm. Ever since I never been really happy unless I can walk on grass; over moors and hills certainly, but mainly just through fields.

So for me spring is that eruption of new grass that begins in mid-April. The field grass grows three inches in a week and the insects buzz around the early wildflowers. Sit on the bough of a low tree and you can survey a scene that must have been repeated year by year ever since farming began: the rolling grass-covered hills, bursting with spring life. It always fills me with energy and hope.

What's for dinner?

Probably a salad starter, rocket, olives, feta cheese, followed maybe by pasta or some such and after some fruit or cheese or rhubarb from the garden

Planning to travel to next?

Thanks to our dear friends Rosie and her husband we are off again to France next month to stay once more at ‘The Mill,’ with its walnut trees, deep down in the Auverne. Spring will have long arrived there. The chestnuts will be in full leaf. Even the walnuts, the latest of trees, will be bursting into leaf.

I have always loved France and quite frankly would be content if I never travelled anywhere else. I was semi-offered a trip to the Smithsonian Festival in Washington DC this summer, though it now looks as though I won’t be going. I am not the slightest dismayed. The thought of jet lag (from which being a bad sleeper at the best of times I suffer greatly) compounded by a hot, humid and crowded city outweighs the attraction of novelty. I prefer the shady comforts of an outdoor lunch in an Auverne village and to walk in solitude over the fields of Wales.

Best thing you ate or drank lately?

Having been raised on a pig farm I grew up with a great fondness for pigs. They are the most intelligent of animals and generally diligent, clean and respectful folk. If only pigs could learn to grow soft coats, to remain the size of piglets and above all to procure padded feet rather than pointed trotters, I am sure we should never have started to eat them.

Indeed, for many years in fact I didn’t, cringing at the conditions in which these wonderful animals were raised. Then came the movement for outdoor-reared, organic pork and I confess I have succumbed. Last night I feasted on organic pork sausages, bought in the farmers’ market, and made with prime meat flavoured with chives. With them went a most unusual and flavoursome country wine from the deep south of France, which some kind guest must have left as a calling card. Mas des Deux Frères it called itself.

Last thing you bought?

From a charity shop Monmouth: a book about how to tour vineyards.

Flower of the moment?

I would say nasturtium, for which I have a likeness almost as fond as for organic pork sausages, but, of course, they are still at the toddler stage - bravely shoving a couple of leaves above the bare earth in promise of all those vermilion trumpets to come. So I better say geranium, my next favourite flower, particularly when scarlet. I bought some a week ago in town. Already they are in full bloom.

They have a particular resonance for I remember, aged about 4, being taken by my father to paint a picture of a nearby house outside which scarlet geraniums were blossoming. My painted geraniums looked almost like the real thing, I thought. At least from a distance.

Favourite ever film?

I hate such questions. In fact I hate choosing in general. There is so much to enjoy. Besides films you enjoy at one time, you may not enjoy on another. Some have repeated watchability - Casablanca, for instance - but I have never been as thrilled by that film as by watching Jungle Book, with its elephants, rubies, tigers at the age of 7. Or so moved as by the dreamy romanticism of ‘Un Homme et Une Femme’ or Dr Zhivago, which I first watched in a cinema in Hannover, snuggled up in the darkness. Or even Lawrence of Arabia, which triggered a lifetime of admiration for Peter O’Toole and a general infatuation with camels.


Care to share some wisdom?

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever had - though I have to confess it is not always easy to apply - is to find yourself good professionals to assist you on your voyage through the high seas of life. Good doctors, good dentists, good solicitors, good accountants, good architects and so forth. Sadly, most professionals are not good. Too many are in the profession for the money, or for a career, instead of being dedicated to their client and most, in my experience, are simply not half as competent as they think they are, at least in the sense of having the common sense to see the big picture and to understand your agenda rather than what they assume automatically would be good for you.

If you were a god/goddess who would you be?

As at least part of my life is in communications I had better say Mercury; besides, I’ve always fancied those winged anklet thingies. For the greater part of my life I have laboured under the delusion that if one only concentrated one could step of the bottom of a stair and remain floating. I guess Mercury would have been able to do that with a little flutter of his heels. Unfortunate, though, if he ever got cramp.

If I were allowed a second shot, however, I would say Cybele, who appeals to my dual nature. She was one of the minor goddesses. Even so she was the mother of King Midas, and as a young and extravagant woman had the panache to drive a chariot pulled by lions. On a Turkish holiday her chariot harness broke. It was fixed by a farmer named Gordius, who had a sideline in untiable knots. In recognition of this the ever extravagant Cybele made Gordius a King (or maybe it was Prime Minister) and in another extravagant gesture liberated northern Turkey to give him something to rule over. She called the land Phyrigia: no doubt because it was very hot.

Being a timid and retiring soul, I have rather fancied Cybele’s extravagant streak and the ability to create Kings and liberate lands on the scale of an American President. And to bear a son with the incidental ability to turn things into gold, would, I have to say, come in most handy when faced with the ugly coincidence of paying the VAT bill and needing a new boiler.


Rules of the meme.

Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag 8 people. OK, I’ll tag the following (though if it’s a pain or a chore, just smile sweetly - or curse me roundly - and move on…)

Westerwitch
Happy Snaper
Faith
ElisabethM
Little Brown Dog
Un Peu Loufoque
Jackofall
Pondside
Lampworkbeader

Apologies if you have been tagged already!