Food History

Once upon a time, two blogfriends tagged me. There was Dave at You Tube Digger, who wanted me to give five reasons why I loved blogging, and there was Catslyn at SCA Life, who wanted me to tell you seven unusual things about myself. I couldn’t get to them until now and I’m doing them both at once because my life is rather hectic this June. My hectic life is all good stuff, with lots of food encounters of the curious kind. It’s just busy. Anyhow, here are my answers to the questions - and I’m going to ask people to please tag themselves, since I can’t choose who to tag and answer the questions (yes, at this moment I lack faith in multiskilling - I burned soup yesterday and haven’t been the same since).

First, five reasons why I love blogging:

1. I get to meet the most interesting people. I don’t just mean online. Every now and again I have lunch or dinner or coffee with someone I’ve met in blogland and we discover that the friendship isn’t just the blog and the comments in answer.

2. I get to say the most embarrassing things, then discover that some of them aren’t nearly as embarassing as I thought (mind you, other things are worse than I thought).

3. I can share my love of history. I don’t really need to explain this one, do I?

4. I can share my love of food. If I didn’t really need to explain my love of history then I certainly shouldn’t need to explain my love of food. Note how pictures of me don’t generally show my waistline.

5. I can experiment with ideas and with writing. I can think half-finished thoughts and go back to them later and develop them in posts down the track. The comments I get help me grow and think and learn. For me, blogging (and life) is all about learning and friends.

Seven unusual things about myself

It’s very hard to find unusual things about oneself. I’m the centre of my own life and I feel perfectly normal. Two different groups of friends reassured me today that I’m not normal at all and that this is a good thing. This doesn’t help me work out what’s unusual, so there’s a fair bit of guesswork in this list. If anyone wants to help out in the comments, feel free.

1. I have a big head. I mean this quite literally - I wear large hats. I also have a long torso for my height, which is very handy in cinemas.

2. From the moment I could crawl I was in the kitchen banging saucepan lids together. I think Mum taught us to cook very early simply to stop us banging those lids. They made such a satisfying sound!

3. I knew I wanted to study history and write fiction from when I was very small. Alas, I am a slow developer and I didn’t take myself seriously until my mid to late thirties.

4. I am one of the founders of Women’s History Month in Australia.

5. I am one inch too short to reach the top shelf in most libraries. All the best books seem to be kept on the top shelves in those libraries, too.

6. When I was little, my sisters and I called my mother our “Maxi-Mum.” When we grew up, she became our “Mini-Mum.”

7. I have a disarticulated skull called Perceval on one of my bookshelves.

food history, memes, SCA Life, You Tube Digger, personal reflections