The Ten Things Meme

The Lovely Late Bloomer tagged me to do The Ten Things meme, and I’ve been racking my brians for something noteworthy about myself that I haven’t already splashed over the www. Naturally I immediately turned to my Soul Mate and Bloggie Muse for advice. The Lovely Ms. Mac was no bloody help whatsoever. She wrote: Everything about you is interesting, everything. I would simply refuse to do the meme, citing the fact that it's quite clear that you are interesting from everything you've ever previously written on your blog.

So, back to my own devices. My extensive brians-racking has thrown up (tee hee!) the following thoughts:

My cooking and birthday cakes are already globally famous. My helpless adoration of Ms. Mac is internationally noted. My extraordinary offspring’s every twitch and utterance are tediously documented on the Sweetness and Light blog. What else about me is left? I may have to delve deep into the dark and sordid underbelly of my personality… Here goes:

1) I sometimes wonder what exactly it would feel like to possess a penis. It’s not exactly a fantasy of mine, but I can - by concentrating very hard - imagine how it would feel, not only to possess one, but to play with it, get an erection and ejaculate. It’s utterly fabulous!

2) One of the best shags I ever had was on a canal boat in Lancashire (UK) with a leather-jacketed, motorbike-riding, shaved-headed Lothario named Brett. Ooh, but he was tasty. The earth may not have moved, but the boat certainly did!

3) If I’m ever brave (or foolish) enough to get a tattoo, it will incorporate a peacock, a sunshine and a calf. Hey, I didn’t say it would be pretty or stylish!

4) I clearly remember having sucked a little boy’s penis when I was only four or five years old. It was fairly innocent – no really! – I think I just wondered what it would taste like. He was my neighbour, we were showing each other our naughty bits and we also peed, giggling, into a plastic bucket in his bedroom for a dare.

5) As a little girl, I really wanted to be a librarian when I grew up. Especially during the winter. The thought of spending cold, rainy and windy winter days in the cosy library surrounded by books and perhaps clutching a mug of hot chocolate was my idea of heaven. It still is.

6) Scars and assorted badges of honour:

- chipped front tooth from falling off a horse;
- t-shaped scar in fleshy ball of my thumb from climbing over barbed wire fence when escaping from a Loch Ness monster (but in Karori, NZ);
-linear, but strangely hooked at one end, caesarean scar cunningly hidden by pubes;
- most recent scar: a delicate, trans-naval incision from laparascopic tubal ligation to prevent further procreation.

7) I was very arty-crafty as a little girl. My school friends and I all learned to sew, crochet, hook rugs, embroider and knit. For a while there was a craze for making chokers out of macramé and beads - hey, this was way back in the Seventies when manufactured clothes were relatively expensive! I wish I’d kept the chokers and belts, as they may well come back into fashion. Actually I think they did come back into fashion about ten years ago, but I blinked and missed it.

I was a champion calligrapher and would be a champion scrapbooker now if I didn’t have a job, children, blog, birds, mystifyingly dirty house and Evil Hubby to maintain. I might sell the children for medical experiments, thus allowing me hours of leisure time in which to do scrapbooking. The cold hard cash from the sale of said children would also enable me to buy the expensive materials required. A flawless plan indeed.

8) Hi, my name is Antipo and I’m a hyperbolic. My obsessive and all-consuming passion for hyperbole is not a recent affliction, as I discovered when I flicked through my teenage diaries. At the age of fourteen I complained about having to keep my radio whisper-quiet; the weather was atrocious when the temperature dropped to 8 degrees C; losing my pencil case at school was bloody awful and disastrous; winning two tickets from a radio station to see the Kurt Russell as Elvis movie was really exciting!!! and absolutely amazing!!!, the prospect of sorting out all the clothes and junk in my bedroom was terrifying.

I do it consciously for comedic effect now, but, in my youth it was entirely spontaneous. Ugh.

9) I will forever be cruelly torn between my deep and sincere love of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and my black hatred of picking the tiny chips of hazelnut from between my teeth after consuming them.

10) I am extremely brave in the face of dental pain. Actually I had no choice in the matter, as various dentists puzzled for years over my mysterious resistance to anaesthesia. Giving birth was a doddle compared to getting bridgework done.

One dentist (my favourite!) finally figured out that my body does not contain the correctly shaped receptors to enable absorption of the molecules of regular anaesthesia. He ordered a special anaesthesia just for me, which happily arrived in time for the root canal he performed upon me.


Can I go to (11)? Many thanks.

11) Have already described my exotic South Sea birth, but will cheat and post it again for my newer readers.

I squirmed and squealed my way into the world on 20th February 1965 in the throbbingly tropical South Sea paradise of Suva, Fiji. You always suspected there was a touch of the international woman of mystery about me, didn't you? I was around two weeks overdue, and that turned out to be a very good thing. Draw closer little ones, while I tell you an exciting story.

My parents lived in Matavatacou (Tailevu Province), some 40 miles from Suva. At my due date a hurricane washed away the bridge on the only road into Suva and the maternity hospital. But, by the time my mother actually went into labour, two weeks late, the bridge had been rebuilt! Was that a very early flash of brilliance on my part, I wonder? Could I have possibly sensed that I should stay in my deluxe amniotic hotel just a little longer, thus saving my mother's life, and my own?

My poor mother suffered a long and difficult labour and I had to be pulled out with forceps eventually, amid spectacular gore and suffering. My infant self was temporarily paralysed all down my right side and I still have prominent veins in my right eyelid as a badge of honour that even today I like to show off as a conversation starter at elegant parties. My poor Mum had to have vast quantities of industrial strength stitches. If it's any consolation Mum, I still feel really bad about this. I can't help wondering if, about 14 or 15 years later, you compared the pain of those stitches to the pain of the teenage antics I inflicted upon you...