Sunday, January 22, 2006

another 4 things...

for the new year.
It's still just about January and I told myself I would do this one.....thanks to Make Tea Not War for it.

Four things I want to do before 2006 is over:
1. Go back to Morocco.
2. Have set up a successful feminist network in my area
3. Be able to say I play piano accordion and be happy to demonstrate, confident that people will be fairly impressed at my skill.
4. Know what work I want to do, where and for whom.

Four things I say a lot:
1. "I'm tired"
2. “bollocks”
3. "I love you"
4. "let’s do lunch"

Four things I don't trust:
1. politicians
2. religion
3. my body
4. my ability to relax

Four things I do trust:
1. my partner
2. my friends
3. music to move me
4. a good book to help me switch off

Four people from history I'd like to meet:
I am not good at talking to people I look up to when they are strangers, but…..
1. Carol Shields
2. George Gershwin
3. Virginia Woolf
4. Charles Darwin

Four best movies of 2005:
1. Kinsey
2. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
3. Corpse Bride
4. A Very Long Engagement

Four best books I've read in 2005:
1. Margaret Atwood – Cat’s Eye
2. Lionel Shriver – We Need to Talk About Kevin
3. Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
4. Shamim Sharif – The World Unseen

Four best gigs or albums of 2005:
1. Spiers and Boden at Northwich
2. Bellowhead at Bridgnorth Folk Festival
3. Spiers and Boden “Songs”
4. Eddi Reader at Middlewich Folk Festival

I'm following in Make Tea Not War's footsteps - I'm not tagging anyone but, by all means, consider yourself tagged if you feel you have nothing more important to do....let me know if you do and I'll link to you!

Thursday, January 12, 2006

4 people who should consider themselves tagged...

Birdy Chirp at Doing the Right Thing
Clare Sudbery
Simon at under the green hill
Alec at The Valley of Lost Things

if you fancy it...I didn't realise that that should be the last of the "4 things" on my post - oops!

oh, and while I'm here - this is a "positive quote of the day" that I like -
" You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims."
-- Harriet Woods (1927-) American Politician

I found this site when I browsing for positive news sites one day late last year. Most of the quotes are by men and are often a bit stuffy.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

4 things you never knew you needed to know about meme…..

Thanks to Winter Woods for the tag, I am about to lose some of my mystery!!!

4 jobs I've had:
And I’ve had lots….
1. Avon “Lady” - When I was about 16 I did a bit of selling – I was such a girly young thing – I looked about 30 and was totally signed up to the need for make-up and perfume. I mostly sold it to my school friends.
2. Sales assistant at Morrison’s – T loves to hear about how my nylon uniform with nylon tights underneath that I had to wear even in scorching hot summer vacation, would percolate my bottom. I used to “hide” in the staff dining room behing my copy of “Great expectations” that I struggled to read for my degree course – but it was better than having to make polite conversation.
3. Team manager for my local Alcohol Advisory Service – a really varied job recruiting, training, supervising and managing volunteer and paid staff most of whom were counsellors.
4. Community development worker. My main role in my last job was to bring together local residents’ groups reps, local Councillors and local public service managers to identify and try to improve things in specific neighbourhoods in the city, such as litter problems, lack of health services or children’s play areas. The Council kept the team of 10 of us for nearly 3 years but as we started to really enable local people to get their voices heard and to change things they pulled the plug and I was made redundant.

4 movies I can watch over and over
as a rule I don’t much like watching films again, I don’t tend to read books more than once either....
1. Topsy Turvy – the story of the relationship issues surrounding the writing and performing of the Mikado – based on the lives of Gilbert and Sullivan – a Mike Leigh film – brilliant (and I love the music, it reminds me of being in the school production when I was about 11, so that’s a bonus).
2. Guys and Dolls – another musical – This is a classic – funny, lively and cheesy – it also reminds me of my youth when I performed some of the numbers with my local amateur operatic society.

The next two are a bit of cheat - I used to watch them a lot, but have not done for years.
3. Clockwise – a bit sad I know, but it makes me laugh every time - stars the wonderful John Cleese.
4. Educating Rita – this is quite dated now, but I used to watch it a lot and always cried. It was one of the first films I saw that I understood to be amount “women’s lib”, that and “The Colour Purple” which I also watched many times.

4 places I've lived:
1. Staffordshire Moorlands where I was born and bred in a boring large village near Stoke-on-Trent
2. Hanley – boring, run-down, city centre of Stoke on Trent
3. Liverpool, at St Katharine’s College – part of the University.
4. Newcastle-under-Lyme – a fairly boring market town in North Staffordshire (well in the suburbs of the town really)

4 TV shows I love to watch:
1. QI – hilarious and very informative
2. BBC/ Channel 4 documentaries like “Coast”, “Life in the Undergrowth”
3. Made for TV dramas - Stephen Poliakoff plays in particular – new series of his stuff coming up on Sunday nights starting next week
4. Music programmes – Jools Holland, BBC4 sessions.

4 places I've been on vacation:
1. Morocco
2. Amsterdam
3. Cornwall
4. Lake District

4 blogs I visit every day:
well most days....
1. Desperate Kingdoms
2. Valley of Lost Things
3. Travelling Punk
4. Chozma photoblog

4 of my favourite foods:
1. pasta with tomato based sauce
2. chocolate with a high cocoa content
3. fruit smoothie drinks
4. fresh soup – anything vege

4 places I'd rather be:
1. Morocco
2. Lake District
3. anywhere peaceful with lots of trees and water and great food
4. just not at work…..

4 albums I can't live without:
1. Spiers and Boden - Bellow
2. Spiers and Boden - Songs
3. Eddi Reader – Eddi Reader
4. Billy Joel – Cold Spring Harbor

4 vehicles I've owned:
1. a bike
2. a Datsun Cherry
3. a Nissan Sunny
4. a Nissan Micra

Thursday, January 05, 2006

reappropriate's carnival number 6

reappropriate has done a fantastic job referencing loads of fascinating blog entries about issues of concern or interest to us all - the one that caught my eye from my first visit was this... fugusashi