100 things (21 - 30)

21. I have three tattoos, which I forget about frequently. There's not really any significance to them except that the first is my star sign - the other two are just designs I liked. I don't believe in astrology, but I wanted something that was in some way personal to me, and the sign is simple. I don't think I could have any more as the only reason I have three is because they are addictive, so if I had any more I could run out of unobtrusive places to have them pretty quickly. 22. I also went through a phase of piercing during which time I had my nose, eyebrow, tongue and chin pierced. The only one to survive was the tongue piercing, and even then I'm not really sure why. Possibly because it's the most dangerous and damaging, and the small self-destructive part of me that enjoys winding my Mum up wants to keep it. 23. I don't really like going out. I mean, I will gladly go to a gig or an event, but rarely go out anywhere just for the sake of it, on the grounds that I like to be able to sit down if I want to, I don't want to listen to rubbish music chosen by someone else to appeal to the majority of the clientele, I don't want to pay £3 for a drink I could buy from a supermarket for 50p, I don't want to have to wait for a drink, I like to know that the toilet arrangements aren't going to make me want to throw up, and really, if the only people I wanted to see are the people I went with, why not all just stay at our house (or theirs) and be done with it. Maybe it comes from not having a local - I can see how people in Walkern, the drunkiest village I am aware of, can enjoy a night at the pub seeing people who they might not necessarily invite over for an evening, but are fun to spend time with. However I consider going to Walkern as an event, so that puts it into an acceptable category of leaving the house. Fortunately, this is one of the many matters on which the Boy Wonder and I agree, meaning that we mostly invite people over to our house and enjoy all the benefits of going out without any of the drawbacks. 24. For the wife (and daughter) of a musician, I am remarkably unmusical myself. I learnt piano from the age of around 5 and I really wanted to start lessons. Unfortunately, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty and neighbourliness, my mother sent me to the piano teacher she had as a child, who was by then in her 80s and even more cantankerous and grumpy than she had been during my Mum's childhood. She wouldn't let us take the traditional route of attaining grades, instead replacing achievement targets with her own arcane system of ticks and double ticks, shorthand notes in her ancient notebook and lengthy discussions with my Mum about her ulcerated legs which were far from a pleasant way to finish a lesson. I admire my Mum's intentions, but have officially designated her decision to inflict Miss Sherringham on me as a poor one, and one which possibly contributed to my determination to drop my piano lessons as soon as I was able. 25. I have never got over substituting my own words to songs which I can't quite make out. As a child I didn't worry about words I didn't understand and just inserted nonsense into songs which I wanted to learn. As an adult I still do this, and don't think to correct words from songs I knew a a child, so the lyrics in my head are a mish mash of half-heard snippets, made up words and (presumably) correct parts making any public singing a minefield of potential embarassment. 25. I would like to write for a living. I assumed while I was growing up that this meant being an author, but the more I work and the more I write, the more I tend towards any kind of freelance working where I get to manipulate words, read and regurgitate facts and ideas, or even just proofread other people's work for a living. I swing between the belief that I have a novel/poetry compilation/comedy script inside me and the belief that actually I just want a job where I can claim anything as 'research' and spend large amounts of time reading and 'waiting for inspiration'. 26. If I had enough money to live on, I could easily entertain myself without ever having another job. This seems to surprise a lot of people, which I thought showed a lack of imagination on their parts, but now I am not so sure. Off the top of my head, I can think of 5 degrees I would like to do: Marine Biology, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology and Criminology. None of these things are careers I would like to pursue, so much as fields in which I have an interest that I think I could easily enjoy a course on, particularly if the requirement to achieve academically was only theoretical. Maybe it's not lack of imagination that makes people cling to the standard structure of working life, maybe it's lack of curiosity about what they could do if they had a completely unfettered choice. 27. My comfort zone for temperature is around two degrees of moderate warmth - I wilt when the weather is vaguely hot, and I shiver when it's even vaguely cold. I considered practicing coping with colder weather, but then I realised that any success would probably impact negatively on my ability to deal with warmer weather, so I decided to leave it alone. 28. I love thunderstorms, torrential rain and dramatic lightning. 29. I have trained myself to eat hot food through a rigourous process of devouring delicious curries from the Al Amin. 30. I can't really ride a bike, by which I mean that I can do the mechanical stuff about moving the pedals and keeping just about upright, but I can't signal without falling over sideways and I have never ridden a bike on the road.