Hands across the blogosphere

In concurrence with what the baggage said over there, I've been to visit Marmoset and am trying his meme.

What were you doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago, at the College of St Mark and St John in Plymouth, I had just started seeing the Painter after a heady exchange of poems left in pigeonholes; he was wild, arrogant, longhaired and much, much different from the service types I'd been out with before or indeed married. There wasn't the faintest hint of rugger bugger about him. Instead he was funny, sensitive and not a little insecure. I asked him to marry me after four weeks (pathetic cow) and he dithered for another two years - slowly, slowly catchy monkee, as it were.

What were you doing one year ago?
One year ago we had just spent the last few weeks coming to the terms that the Painter had had a major stroke, from which thankfully he made an almost complete recovery. We had endured a very traumatic period before having just been evicted from our family home by a close family member and there was a lot of hurt, bitterness and anger flying through the air at Urine Towers. The days were very dark and our relationship seemed to have crashed into the kind of sharp, dark, holing-below-the-water-line type of rocks you get on the Lizard. In the course of a year everything seemed to have gone bad.

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Tomato sandwiches with worcestershire sauce and black pepper
2. antipasta
3. tapas
4. cheese in all its many and wonderous varieties (although I could easily cgive cheddar a miss
5. Kalamata olives in rosemary and garlic infused oil.

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. The Wheels on the bus gour orund and around (and around and around and around)
2. Flower of Scotland
3. Anything by Rogers and Hammerstein
4. The Abba discography
5. Like Soldiers Do by Billy Bragg

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Buy a smallholding in the Orkneys
2. Buy houses for my children held in trust until they are 30
3. Start my own home made soup and preserves business a la Baxters
4. Buy a tractor
5. Learn to drive on one of those intensive driving course and spend the summer before we start our smallholding touring through Fance in a Morgan with my husband.


Five things you like doing:
1. I won't be as coy as Marmoset, I love making love, having sex and even shagging with the right person at the right time.
2. Writing
3. Eating
4. Taking long rambling walks
5. Loving my family

Five things you would never wear again:
1. Prada
2. Gucci
3. Versace
4. Dolce and Gabbana
5. Donna Karan (set aside the fact that I wouldn't get a little toe into most of these things I think it's a realistic list).

Five favourite toys:
1. My kenwood Chef for which I have some new bits acquired on ebay
2. My husband
3. My pruning knife
4. The wireless aerial thingy for the broadband because it lets me talk to you lot
5. A really good cook's knife.

I tag Ally (when you are better) and Stegbeetle. I would also like to tag KitchenWitch but she a) doesn't have the time and b) I'm not sure they are her thing, so the option is open without obligation.