Drunk me vs sober me

Due to the recent requirement for me to give up drinking, I have been spending a lot of time around drunk people whilst sober. This has lead to the surprising discovery (although perhaps only surprising to me) that, apart from the obvious physical effects, I am about the same when drunk as when sober. Although I am aware that I do not enjoy being out of control when drunk and try to avoid getting 'falling over' intoxicated, I kind of assumed that there would be some lessening of my inhibitions when under the influence of alcohol, however it turns out that I was incorrect. I can't quite work out whether I am generally just predisposed to telling inappropriate stories regardless of whether I've been drinking, or whether my dislike of excessive drunkenness (for no more uptight reasons than that I throw up really - I realise it sounds a little like I'm some kind of temperance fanatic) means that I just have a similar approach to sharing no matter how much I've drunk. I can't work out whether that's admirable or stupid, but it's certainly an eye opener.

Me vs the Boy Wonder

Apropos of not a lot, this evening I just happened to ask the Boy Wonder if he would like to be more like me. This was not designed to be a trick question, but the speed and fervour with which he delivered his answer ('no' in case you couldn't guess) and the fact that I wouldn't even hesitate to say that I would like to be more like him made me wonder whether it would be better if we were both more like me or more like him, so I have decided to score us both according to some arbitrarily chosen criteria in the hopes of proving one of us right.

1. Innate gender-specific abilities

The Boy Wonder is blessed with a sort of elemental knowledge about things like cars, guns, planes and other traditional boy stuff, whereas I fail spectacularly on the girl-stuff front. I have only one handbag, didn't know eyeliner existed until I was about 13 and don't even like cake, therefore failing on many scores at being a girl. I do like kittens and puppies, but allergies to both make that a fairly tragic state of affairs involving red eyes and rather too much snot to be anything approaching cute.

2. Social Awkwardness

Whilst I am currently the owner of an unwanted fringe (on which more, perhaps, another time), an odd 'friendship' with the eastern European guy who sells the Big Issue outside our local Budgens and a weird village magazine delivery round due to my inability to extricate myself from awkward situations, the Boy Wonder is admirably able to sail through life without ever seeming to torture himself with the idea that he is secretly offending people who will hate him more and more with every encounter until their seething resentment causes them to break into our house and lick every item in the cutlery drawer.

3. Ability to Deal with Bugs

This is where I triumph, largely due to the Boy Wonder's hilarious and irrational fear of moths. For reasons which may well be due to some deep psychological trauma from which his memory is protecting him, he believes that moths will bite him in the face and transmit some kind of moth based disease from which he will never recover. He is also scared of cockroaches to the extent that he once declared the sighting of four cockroaches to be an 'infestation' and made me run the gauntlet of an unfamiliar side passage in the pitch dark to activate a security light which would send them scuttling back underneath the house we were living in. He claims to be 'fine' with a selection of other creepy crawlies, but rarely passes up an opportunity to get me to deal with them whilst lurking on the periphery of the room offering encouragement and keeping a safe distance. Perhaps the one downside of my awesome abilities when it comes to bugs is the fact that gardening becomes almost impossible when I have to stop and rescue every insect which might be injured during the process.

4.Ability to Exist Without External Stimulation

Sometimes the Boy Wonder will just sit and stare at a wall, thinking about nothing. I, on the other hand, require almost limitless entertainment, finding that just watching television for example is nowhere near enough for me to remain focussed without another task in hand (such as writing this post). This has some benefits in as much as I can get a lot done when I'm on form, but also some negative side effects such as my hatred of showering on the grounds that washing is nowhere near fun enough to make listening to the radio an acceptable alternative form of distraction. I should point out, I still shower once a day, I just put it off and whine about it until I absolutely have to do it, making me sound like I actively want to be a hobo with things living in my hair, whereas I actually quite like being clean but would prefer to achieve that effect whilst reading a good book.

5. Ability to Fill in Forms and Deal with Admin Tasks that Keep Our Household Running

I recently completed the application process for a new credit card, including a secondary one for the Boy Wonder. All he had to do was sign and date a form to confirm that he was aware of this. I took my eye off him for around a second, which was apparently long enough for him to sign in the wrong box and then dither uncertainly as to where to write the date. He once declared the process of buying a house as 'easy' on the grounds that his main contribution to the whole affair was pretending to read the masses of paperwork which came our way, before saying 'it looks fine to me' and writing his name wherever he thought looked most likely.

6. Ability Not to Die in Normally Non-Deadly Situations

The Boy Wonder totally kicks my arse on this one - not only has he rarely even been hospitalised, but his body apparently understands that nuts are a good source of protein and can make a delicious snack. My body on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that nuts are a threat to my wellbeing on such a scale that it's worth killing me to keep their marauding ways at bay. Not only that, but apparently it has now decided that penicillin, a drug specifically designed to treat illness, falls into the same category and warrants a similar sort of nuclear stand-off whereby it races to kill itself before the penicillin can. All this despite the fact that for the last 31 years (up to and including the last 8 weeks) it has recognised the healing properties of said antibiotics and it has only been in the last week that it's taken it's near psychotic stance on the matter.

7. Apoplectic Rage

I can barely go a day without descending into apoplectic rage about one thing or another. Recent examples include: a woman on 'Wanted Down Under' who was considering moving to Australia with her husband of four years and leaving her 14 year old daughter back in England; the book I read by Moon Unit Zappa and the reviews about it on Amazon; the fact that all store bought pesto has nuts that I can't see in it (c.f point 6); misleading use of statistics in contexts that are supposed to be educational.

The Boy Wonder works himself into a rage about things that can really easily be avoided: me saying that I have a tapeworm; people leaving the ends of their guitar strings hanging out of the tuners instead of trimming them neatly; me saying 'oui' like a French trucker when he asks me a question; the fact that our guttering keeps springing leaks and depositing water into the air bricks which ventilate the area under our house.

8. Being Ticklish

The Boy Wonder is ridiculously and entertainingly ticklish, meaning he can be completely incapacitated by a light poke to the side. I, however, quite like being tickled and am therefore impervious to retaliations, meaning that I would hold up better under interrogation by a pervy clown or feather duster, which I suppose is some sort of skill.

9. Light Footedness

Living with the Boy Wonder is like having a herd of elephants stampeding around the house, and even when he's trying to be quiet he manages to make everything in the entire house shake as though we live at the joining of tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface.

10. The Ability to Accurately Ascertain My Level of Drunkenness

In recent times, the Boy Wonder has been responsible for the following when under the influence of alcohol: three stops for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home at 3am, drunken limping and the subsequent denial thereof, pretending to be a toad (albeit a fairly poor impression which fooled nobody), and consistently telling me he's 'not that drunk' despite being clearly quite drunk. I, on the other hand, seem to tend more towards believing that I'm a lot more drunk than I am even when I am actually still in control of most of my faculties.

Totting up the results of this supremely unscientific analysis it appears that unless one of us proves to be a dab hand at the arbitrary assigning of value to any of the criteria above, it has proved a wildly inconclusive yet somewhat entertaining exercise.

Inapropriate Helpfulness

Tonight, whilst watching the Boy Wonder play, a couple got up from the sofa near us and I noticed that the woman had left her jumper behind. I was about half a second away from snatching it up and chasing after her when I realised that they were just at the bar getting more drinks and I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't get to be the kind of helpful soul cliché that restores people's faith in humanity. This left me even more convinced that one of the main motivators for acts of kindness towards strangers (at least on my part) is the warm fuzzy feeling of helping your fellow humans.

In part, I suspect this was fuelled by last night's feel good opportunities: the Boy Wonder was playing at a venue in London which was only accessible by a road which had been blocked off due to roadworks. It became clear that prior to the roadworks it was possible to get through to somewhere else, so after watching a couple of people walk all the way down and then turn back when they realised they couldn't get through I started helpfully pointing out to people that they couldn't get anywhere. They were all grateful for the knowledge which allowed them to save a few seconds and not look like a pillock and I felt like a good Samaritan for helping them out. It didn't really matter that the time it took me to explain to them was around the same length of time it took most people to work it out for themselves, because instead of a neutral observer, I was a helpful contributor which I found satisfying.

Presumably most people who are motivated to help others gain at least some gratification from doing so, in which case can they really be considered truly altruistic acts? Is it still even vaguely altruistic if you start to feel vaguely resentful to people who turn out not to need your help when you were already prepared for the feeling of doing a good thing? I'm pretty sure that I'm not a terrible person, even that I am more helpful than most, but is it really appropriate to begin to have secretly resentful feelings for a girl who just left her cardy on a sofa when she went to get a drink?

100 things (41 - 50)

41. I really hate the sound of people eating. I cannot stress enough how unpleasant I find it to listen to the sound of someone eating. It's bad enough when they eat nicely with no crunching, slurping and chewing, but when the person eating is incapable of completing the process without opening their mouth half way through and sharing the sound of their chewing with those around them, it becomes intolerable. 42. I would love to work for myself and be judged on the merits of my work and my ability to do what's needed rather than the petty bureaucracy which comes with an 'office job'. I assumed that adult life would be a little less demeaning than to be hauled in for questioning about what could possibly be more important than being at work, incorrectly as it turns out. It's too tempting to just say 'stick it' and go off on my merry way, but I will remain calm, collected and insouciant and try to avoid saying anything alluding to my ultimate plan. 43. I always thought I had a novel in me, but I am coming to realise that it might not be a novel, just a novel's worth of stuff. I like writing, but am not so committed to my own thoughts that I wouldn't be happy writing to command. In fact, my own thoughts seem to provide material for this blog and little else, meaning that I can't imagine myself actually writing anything requiring concerted effort unless I was avoiding other writing work. This is the only way I can see myself making the most of my creative writing skills - as a procrastinating exercise in lieu of gainful employment. 44. I am a night person - when I was at university I used to sleep from about 5am till around 10, then do daytime stuff, have another nap and be awake from about 5pm again. I am always more motivated at later hours - something about knowing that everyone else is asleep makes me want to do things, but having a full day stretching ahead of me gives procrastination new powers to suck time into the abyss. 45. I'm scared of the logical conclusions to my beliefs. I love the fact that this country has a welfare system designed to support those in need, and I resent those who view a life on benefits as a lifestyle choice. However, I am aware that this kind of choice stems from a lack of belief in a person's ability to do better for themselves, a lack of ambition and a failure to feel motivated to earn a place in the world. So, how would I solve it? Well, clearly part of the problem is the low expectations of parents and those around them who never exert any positive pressure to at least find something they enjoy doing and try to make it a career. Which then brings me uncomfortably close to parenthood licenses and other eugenically based solutions to a problem which may not be solvable in the short term. Then I think about the people in genuine need who are not getting enough support and help, my mind then swings to the amount of money it actually costs to administer a programme where funding is allocated on the basis of genuine need rather than self-inflicted poor circumstance, and so on and so on. Then I remember Gulliver's Travels and I am reminded that t'was ever thus, and chill the hell out a bit. 46. I am coming to realise that there are very few things less appealing than watching a co-worker (colleague seems a little too affectionate in this instance) picking their nose and eating it. If that co-worker also has an inflated sense of their own abilities and breath that could floor a rhino it just adds to the complete feeling of disgust that overwhelms you when you are forced into close contact with them. I just want to lean over and say 'Hey dog-food breath - I don't want to watch you eat food, let alone your own snot'. But I won't, for today at least. Did I get smug in there - because he's really smug too. That's not as bad as knowing that everything he touches in the office has his snot mark on it, but it's pretty bad. 47. I wish my skin would grow up a bit - I have the complexion of a hormonal teen, which I am reliably informed will make me look younger in later life as the grease will protect my delicate facial skin from drying out. I assumed I would always look young because I have got teenage skin, which is becoming even more galling the older I get. Damn stupid skin - as if the general rebellion wasn't enough, there's then the constant issue of 'how much do I fiddle before I accept I'm making it worse', and then ever-present 'would I rather it looked worse but hurt less, or would I settle for more pain if I thought nobody could see it?' conundrum. Nothing good to say about my skin generally - it's prone to eczema, infection, heat rash, inexplicable bruising and has the ability to withstand the sun for no more than 18 seconds at a time. 48. It's surprisingly hard to think of things about myself for this exercise - I might have to stop at 50 and come back to it when I have had a chance to experience life as someone who is conscious of trying to write 100 things about themselves. 49. I have never said 'I love you' and not meant it. In fact I have only said it to two people and one was a teenage crush, so although I really meant it at the time and thought it was 'it', the fact that I was going out with someone else two weeks after he dumped me did make me think that perhaps I was deluding myself. Now of course the Boy Wonder is the recipient of my outpourings and I can't imagine saying it to anyone else. 50. I am strangely drawn to peculiar names for our future children - the Boy Wonder is blessed with such an unremarkable name that it's actually remarkable, and now I have got his surname, my already unremarkable name has become even more so. For some reason this makes me want to give our children outlandish names, none of which will fly with the Boy Wonder, so I find myself increasingly trying to trick him into agreeing to them when drunk. Poor kids - they are already referred to as our 'big-headed children' so things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

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.

100 things (11-20)

11. I am a terrible drunk, by which I mean I am prone to either illness or unconsciousness with bouts of plain speaking in between. Part of the problem is that I seem to go straight from sober to very drunk with little warning, meaning that the need for unconsciousness comes on suddenly. Last year, the Boy Wonder and I found ourselves in a punt drinking Super Strength Strongbow. Far from the delightfully drinkable and non-damaging (in the short-term at least) Strongbow that is our friend, this was the kind designed for dwellers of doorways and hard-core functioning alcoholics coming in at 7.5% ABV and representing nearly a day's recommended alcohol consumption in just one can. Such was the effect of drinking this, and a few other things, that I ended up leaning back on the Boy Wonder whilst he played the guitar, slowly losing my grip on consciousness as we gently punted down the river. The next day, I discovered that I had vast bruises across the whole of my back where I had been resting in a ludicrously awkward position which I had failed to notice in my desire to rest my weary eyes. Fortunately, the Boy Wonder propped me up and took me home, but I hate to think what would have become of me had I had to walk anywhere. The plain talking involves me being a little too honest with people, although I'm not the type to get in fights etc, and haven't ever really got my self in trouble (thus far at least!). 12. When the Boy Wonder and I are watching television, if he goes to the loo or gets up to get water, I will be playing a game, fiddling with something or otherwise entertaining myself until he gets back. I can easily watch TV with him without any extra distractions, but for some reason, when he's out of the room I find it very hard to watch without doing at least one other thing. 13. I am really clumsy and often find myself covered in bruises for which I have little or no explanation. In the run up to the wedding, I surpassed my previous inability to negotiate my way around the house and on my wedding day my legs looked like I had been beaten and my big toe nails were both stuck on with superglue after repeated and painful stubbing incidents in the weeks running up to the event. More recently I managed to hit my foot on a wicker waste paper basket in such a way that it swelled up and rendered me incapable of walking. The Boy Wonder is also quite clumsy, having managed to twist his ankle in his sleep and needing crutches after slipping four inches of the back of a lorry. I fear that our future children will be on some kind of register almost as soon as they are capable of independent movement, and possibly sooner if either of us manages to drop, knock or otherwise dent them. 14. I wish I could whistle with my fingers, but despite being able to produce a piercing whistle just using my mouth and several attempts to learn from skilled proponents of the art I always end up with a sore mouth, spit-covered hands and a deflated sense of personal achievement. 15. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my crazy hair. I have very fine hair - despite the fact that it comes down to my waist, you can hold the lot in the fist of one hand - and around my face for some reason I have fluffy, curly hairs which are shorter than the rest of my hair and stick out at right angles to the rest of my head. I always thought these were due to my carelessness and drunken misadventure in my teens, but now I am approaching 30 and it has been several years since I have drunkenly lit any illicit tobacco product from the hob of a cooker, so I can only assume that these are natural. I have been trying to train them, which has been monumentally unsuccessful insofar as all I have achieved it transforming them from fluffy dandelion-style tendrils to full on ruched Charlie's Angels style horns. I am not a great fan of having my hair cut and I have a feeling it's now been over a year since I had it done, but I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that it makes no odds what I do, these stupid tiny hairs will be there ruining things no matter what! 16. I am faddy about food and will happily eat the same meal several times in a row when I am in the first flush of love with a new or rediscovered dish. 17. I don't really make new year's resolutions, due to the potential of monumental failure, but this year I decided I wanted to make two which were: to try seafood (I selected mussels as they seem pretty harmless compared to bigger, slimier creatures like oysters) and to make more pies. My main concern is that to give mussels a fair chance, I should try and eat them fresh and properly cooked, meaning at a restaurant, but I am not entirely sure I'm not allergic to shellfish, meaning that could be an awful idea. Oh well, the pie plan should be coming along in the near future as after eating pie made by one of our friends last weekend, the Boy Wonder and I are inspired and I have ordered pastry and pie fillings to be delivered tonight. 18. I love grammar and spelling to the point where the Boy Wonder has told me off for correcting fliers to an illegal rave. Even this point is annoying because I can never decide whether to use 'flier' or 'flyer' and I get angry with television, newspapers, websites and almost any form of media where they don't even get the basics right. I'm fine with ending on prepositions - I'll probably notice it, but I won't object - but I can't stick apostrophe abuse, misspelling of commonly used words and, thanks to this website the improper use of lowercase Ls. Tooth grinding often ensues, but I wouldn't write to a newspaper about it, so I consider the problem to be under control. I should point out that I do not correct people when they're speaking aloud, except the Boy Wonder occasionally and he normally brings it on himself. In fairness, a lot of what I do involves writing or proofing copy for print, so it's not entirely unnatural, but I do wonder whether my job is a product of my love of spelling and grammar or the other way round. 19. My nut allergy is potentially fatal, but I would rather have my animal allergy fixed - missing out on Toblerone is something I can live with, missing out on kittens is something that makes me sad, and if we have kids I don't want to deprive them of having pets because of my allergies. I also don't want to deprive the Boy Wonder, but he knew about it before he married me, so he's only got himself to blame! 20. I sleep like a dead hamster with my right arm bent up and my wrist tucked under my chin. No matter what position I go to sleep in or how awkward it is to get it there, somehow I will find a way to sleep like this. My Mum and my grandma are the same, which is strangely comforting to me.

100 things (1-10)

Inspired by several people, I thought I would post 100 things about myself that are not commonly known, in an attempt to learn something about myself as well as record my quirks and oddities for posterity. 1. I am happier now than I ever have been at any point in my life to date. Not necessarily at this precise moment, but in life in general I could not be more content. My job annoys me sometimes, but by the time I get home I am over it - I don't lie awake at night fretting over things left undone, or people who have wronged or upset me. I am naturally self critical to the point of remembering stupid things I have said for years (and counting) but I find that even that side of me gives me more of a break now than in previous years. 2. I hate bananas with a passion that surprises me, and apparently have done since I was tiny. My Mum claims (or has claimed) that I used to like bananas until my grandfather, who never liked them, died at which point I started to refuse them in all contexts. Good on my tiny self I say - they represent a horrific combination of mush, slime, smell and stickiness. I cannot think of a single other fruit I do not like, which to me means that bananas are the problem, not me and my over sensitive taste buds. 3. The sound of other people eating can send me into a near-murderous rage, particularly crunchy things, squidgy things and stuff which doesn't fit completely in the person's mouth. Eating with the mouth open is already marked as a sin against all right-thinking people, but I have extended my revulsion to include a whole range of other practices, mostly those which I have to endure in the work place. 4. I prefer to sit by myself at work. This is something I did not know about myself until recently when I was moved from a desk with no immediate neighbours and only one person sitting opposite to a desk with people opposite and on both sides of me. It makes me uncomfortable to have to listen to the noises of them being there (see above) and the uncomfortable sensation I get when someone is looking past me at something on the other side of me. 5. I hate having sticky hands and cannot endure them if there is a way I could remedy the situation. When at home I will rush out to the kitchen at the most tense and exciting point of the action on TV or in the middle of a conversation to wash my hands. I also keep a plentiful supply of stolen hand wipes in my bag for situations where a sink might not be available. 6. I have an overactive gag reflex, which means I am frequently sick, often for no reason other than slightly over enthusiastic brushing of my teeth, failing to spit properly and coughing. I have no idea why I should be subject to this and cannot see any benefits. I am quite good at being sick though, from early warning signs and ability to distinguish 'feeling sick' from 'going to be sick' right through to clean-up and recovery. It's unpleasant to think about, but in some ways comforting to know. 7. I have pathetically weedy fingernails which bend and break really easily and invariably in the worst place possible (meaning below the and of my finger rather than at a glittering gala event). 8. I am intensely annoying and will annoy the Boy Wonder mercilessly, and largely based on his failure to heed the parental adage of 'If you don't react, she'll get bored and leave you alone'. I can entertain myself at his expense for ages, and secretly he loves it which is why I will never get bored of it! 9. I cry when I'm surprised, a fact which never ceases to amuse the Boy Wonder who doesn't actually surprise me deliberately, but certainly finds it entertaining when he does elicit tears of surprise through some innocuous activity such as coming in the door when I am involved in something engaging. 10. I love vinegar so much that chips are really just a vehicle for the non-brewed condiment. I can happily have a swig or two of the good stuff from the bottle, and I kind of enjoy descaling the kettle because the kitchen gets filled with vinegary steam. There are many foods whose primary role I consider to be as a sponge for a generous portion of lemon juice, and I used to buy Jif Lemons with my pocket money. More tomorrow...