mittelschmertz interviews me

1. Do any plants hold special significance for you?

   I have a particular fondness for daisies, especially the small ones people keep trying to eradicate from lawns, but other than being particularly fond of them, not really. Oh, and sunflowers always make me bouncy-happy, because they're like daisies turned up 'til the knob falls off.

2. How about animals?

   We have three cats, but I think the animal that has most significance for me is the shrew; our family calls them moley-shrews for some reason, and I like them. They are small and fast and they don't crap in the breakfast cereal, unlike, say, mice.

3. Do you celebrate or otherwise observe any dates that aren't on the "standard" holiday calendar (such as birthdays, anniversaries or any religious holiday)? Something personal?

   I take note of my half-birthday, 01 May. But I don't celebrate dates much; they don't usually mean a great deal to me. I have a feeling of satisfaction when one of my and Rob's anniversaries comes around, or when the anniversary of me moving to the UK happens. My birthday is very special, because it's my mother's birthday too. But I'm not in tune enough with time to feel an association with a date I thought up myself, rather than a Traditional one.

4. Have you ever run away from home?

   Yes. I made my mother very unhappy until I started getting friends to call her. I ran away from home for days, weeks, and eventually forever. When I finally left home, I didn't give my family my address. It was all very traumatic and unpleasant, but it's over now. I don't run away from home anymore.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? If you aren't there now, what's keeping you from it?

   I would like to live in... Oh, I don't know. I'd like to live on Aran. I'd like to live in Cork. I'd like to live on the north of Gotland. I'd like to live lots of places.

   When we can afford it, we hope to move somewhere with a big house and a big garden, close enough to the countryside and a reasonably sized town that either can be cycled to easily so that we don't have to get a car. I want to have cork tiles and pine ceilings and skylights.

   I'm a lot more focussed on the house than on its location, actually. But it has to be a town with a pedestrian zone and some good bookshops and purple-things shops.

djm4 interviews me

1. Ten years ago, would you have recognised the person you are today?

   Yes, and I would have been horrified at myself for selling out to the mainstream. I would have understood the reasons and condemned them. Then I'd have written some depressing poetry about it.

2. What do you think the Next Big Thing on the Internet will be?

   For the world? No idea. For me? When VOIP really works and it gets used as the primary means of oral communication, so that call prices are not distance-specific. Don't wake me, I like this dream.

3. What behaviour (if any) in friends irritates you the most?

   I hate it when couples bring their sex lives or their difficulties to attention in a way that precludes comment, like public erotic fondling or sniping. Funnily, this bothers me more whenthe group is small (like, us and another couple) than when it's a large party out for the evening. Someone recently phrased it as "When you and Rob are affectionate in public, it's cute. When some people do it, it's foreplay." Public foreplay bothers me.

4. Do you have any literary, TV or film characters with which you identify strongly?

   Not exactly individual characters, but some whole books. Keri Hulme's The Bone People, definitely. Forever.

5. What are your favourite colour and texture?

   Just one? Argh. Er. Colour - I have no idea. Blue-purple end of the spectrum, if I can do that. Texture... argh argh argh. Argh. Er. Water, probably. Is that allowed as an answer?

The Wedding Planner

Today the wily Ailbhe has stalked the easy-access hotel across the veldt, following it to its lair and taking its phone number, room prices and distance in walking minutes from the wedding.

She has also purchased half a dozen facecloths, two packets of dye, white shoe polish (for the wedding shoes), ice-cream and healthy breakfast cereal. Oh, and toilet roll.

And she pounced on some colourful bedding plants which will be installed in the patch out the back, henceforward to be known as Look, It's a Real Garden, It Has Flowers.

And she found a printer to whom she can email PDFs for the printed copies of the ceremony.

And she met a friend from work, the one who rescued her at the Worst Christmas Party In The History Of The Universe Ever, No Really, Worse Than That.

And her arms are pinkish.