Everything you didn't want to know and hadn't thought of asking

This is the ‘I am stalking Mumma Troll’ post (no, Mumma Troll, I’m joking, don’t be scared). First, look at this wonderful pencil case she made with some fur I sent her – isn’t that great? Second, she recently did a list of 25 facts about herself which I thought were really interesting and I thought I would do the same. I mostly wanted to see if I could think of 25 discrete facts about me, well I managed discrete but possibly not discreet, we will see.

1/ I have very clear past-life memories. If I was reading someone’s blog and they said that, I would think they were a bit daft, so if you are thinking that, I do understand.

2/ I feel sick when I think about a particular shape – it’s hard to describe but it’s like tentacles attached to something at the base. If you cook penne pasta and don’t stir it, when you drain it this is what it looks like, and it makes me queasy.

3/ When I was an undergraduate I only went to three lectures. One of them was the wrong subject so I left after five minutes. The other two were unmemorable. I did manage to get a degree.

4/ I am startlingly physically unaffectionate except when I'm drunk, when I sometimes go so far as to pat people very briefly on the shoulder.

5/ I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. I haven’t ever had treatment and I don’t really mind it, especially when I think of all the things I could have instead.

6/ I was born with a club foot, which my mother seems to have dealt with through sheer force of will. I’m not sure which foot it was, so it must be ok now.

7/ I am Reiki Level One Accredited and it has been my experience that Reiki works, even though I absolutely agree that it sounds exactly like a scam someone has dreamed up to take advantage of naïve people.

8/ I have never met a cat that didn’t want me to stroke it. They are putty in my hands.

9/ I used to work in customer services for a small underwear factory whose customers included Catherine Cookson, Mrs Thatcher, and a transvestite called Mandy. I can remember the stock number of the garment Mrs Thatcher used to buy – it was the 1821. Catherine Cookson liked brushed cotton nighties. Mandy was much more eclectic.

10/ Whenever I leave jobs people always give me fabulous, thoughtful presents, and I worry they are just really, really pleased to see the back of me.

11/ When people annoy me I zone out by reciting Tennyson in my head. If they really annoy me I recite Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets.

12/ I was once disciplined for drinking Coke in the bakery at Tesco where I used to work packing baps. Apparently this is a hygiene issue.

13/ I once sat for a fellowship at All Souls, where I told them off for having a Latin translation paper, because it advantaged people with private-school backgrounds.

14/ I met my partner when he taught me Latin at Cambridge. He does have a private-school background, which proves I was right.

14/ I always intended to be an academic, but actually I would have been pretty ropey, so it’s a good job I burned my bridges by always being hungover in paleography supervisions and buggering off to Paris when I should have been doing my dissertation.

15/ I once had to make a formal denial to a solicitor that I was having an affair with my then manager as part of a high-court libel case. I wasn’t having an affair, but I did feel like I’d been teleported back to the 1950s.

16/ I’m a trained Citizens Advice Bureau adviser, and also used to give benefits advice to people in hostels. I try to not listen to politicians talking about people not needing benefits or benefits being too generous, because it makes me absolutely furious.

17/ The worst pain I’ve ever been in was once when I had a dental abscess. The only thing which touched it was getting paralytic, which is partly what put me off drinking.

18/ I give scarily accurate Tarot readings.

19/ When I was young I was hugely self-conscious and would have worn an invisibility cloak if they had sold them somewhere peer-approved. Now I’d happily walk down the high street in a wetsuit, tutu and Deely boppers, so there are some perks to getting older.

20/ I’m very, very prone to resigning from jobs on principle. The last job where I did this, I would have got quite a bit of redundancy money if I’d stayed one more day.

21/ I have absolutely no sense of direction and can get lost standing at the end of my road. When people ask me for directions I try really hard to help but I think most of the time I just make it worse.

22/ The most expensive item of clothing I have ever bought is a Vivienne Westwood Red Label skirt which cost me £250 at a sample sale near Finnsbury Park. Even though I’m pretty much on my uppers I can’t bring myself to put it on Ebay.

23/ I converted to Wicca in a B&B in Ely by reading a book on it. It took as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea. I’m not generally quite that suggestible.

24/ I learned to read when I was freakishly young and once shocked the woman who owned the chip shop near my house by reading ‘Frying Tonight!’ out loud when my dad carried me in to buy supper.

25/ If I don’t understand why someone has done something I pretend I’m reading it in a book, and then I can normally work it out.

I’ve been sewing like a fiend this weekend in between worrying about the fact that the kitchen ceiling has sprung a leak (honestly, this house!). I shall hopefully have one or two things to show you tomorrow. Hooray!