The latest meme

I've been tagged by Elizabethm, whose blog Welsh Hills Again is always a good read. Thank you E. While I don't actually sit here with my hand up shouting 'Me, me. Me, Miss! Meeeeee!' it is always slightly flattering to be asked is it not? Non?

Pesky things memes. First you scratch your head to write something original that wasn't covered in any of the previous ones - just how many little known facts are there about me anyway - and then you have to pass the thing on like a nasty cold. Or swine flu even. My problem is everybody else seems to have got there first. (Ah ha! have just discovered two vulnerable souls. I will pounce...)

What is your current obsession?
Weeding and sowing. The weeds are having a race with the seeds and I am trying to keep one step ahead.

What are you reading?
Joseph O'Connor's 'Star of the Sea'. We have a small book club here - there are 3 of us who meet, drink tea and eat cake. We went to a real Book Club once and were terrified by the erudition. When all possible snippets of gossip are exhausted we discuss a book. This was our last choice. Short of time, I chose to listen to it on my iTouch whilst going about mundane daily tasks where reading would normally be impossible - which meant that I probably heard every word rather than skimming over some of the less gripping passages. Some chapters now are confusingly linked in my head with sowing tomato seed. In the greenhouse I found I could listen uninterrupted without falling asleep. But who did murder Lord Kingscourt? I maintain it was not the amoral Pius Mulvey but the narrator and journalist J Grantley Dixon. My fellow readers and I have read and re-read and we are all still uncertain. Any ideas internet folk?

First spring thing?
A slight pulsing of blood in the veins. A sense of excitement, a thrill in knowing that nothing can stop the inevitablity of the season's arrival...and pushing aside dank leaf mould to discover the blunt snouts of those first snowdrops

What's for dinner?
Salmon cooked in light cream and pesto, purple sprouting broccoli from the garden and a mixture of white and wild rice - which Alan will call (correctly I suppose) grass seed.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?
Oh dear. Must I admit to living in a uniform of jeans, tee shirt and Birkenstocks? It's the National Dress of Trelystan......

Planning to travel to next:
Paxos. Best-ever Ionian island. In the 20 years we've been going there we've noticed that the pace of life has quickened slightly and the lives of the Paxiots, whose main source of income along with olive oil production is tourism, has improved somewhat. Good for them. Essentially though it is the same relaxed place we first visited in 1989; unsophisticated, warm and welcoming. Roll on September when we will return, en famille.

Last thing(s) you bought:
The last two swipes of the Mastercard have bought a wine cooler from Rick Stein's deli in Padstowe (which is, inexplicably, giving me a great amount of pleasure) and another 50 metres of electric poultry netting for the most expensive hens on the planet. Bless 'em.

Flowers of the moment
Apple blossom - gorgeous, frothy, pink and white. Apple Blossom is from Venus?Favourite ever film
Oh dear, I'm not very good at films. Books are best, then radio - it's the pictures in one's head that are more vivid for me. If push came to shove then 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' - crass but always good for a laugh and, like Elizabethm, 'Mama Mia'. Greece, sunshine and unadulterated-no-side-to-it singalong Good Times.

Earliest memory?
Crying, at about 2 years old I think. The hoot of an owl in an elm tree next to the dairy must have woken and upset me. My father came and told me all was well. And it probably was.

Favourite childhood toy?
A dolls' house. Nothing special in retrospect but having parted with it in recent years how I wish it could be magically returned to me along with the secret world furnished with crappy plastic furniture.

Care to share some wisdom?
Be kind
Be inquisitive. Look and learn.
Grasp those opportunities - OK, you may not wish to sky-dive (and neither would I but that's no reason to say 'no' without a great deal of thought).

Which God/Goddess would you like to be?
Minerva I think: Roman goddess of wisdom, arts, crafts and war - although I'd demur when it came to war-craft being of a peaceable nature. Her sacred creature was an owl, also associated with wisdom - and who wouldn't like a sacred owl?


Here are the Rules - because there are always rules:

Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag some people. It should be 8 but I can't believe there are 8 people left in the world who've not had this tag.

Twiglet
Hand knitted Museli
Milla
Nikki-ann
Bodran
Preseli Mags
Withy Brook

Do this if you fancy it, or not, as you please. I won't be offended if you say 'Pah! NoWay.'

Phew. Now I'm exhausted. Perhaps I should nail a shingle to my blog which reads 'The small mountain kingdom of Trelystan is a Meme Free Zone'. For the next month at least.