16 things about me

Yes, this is me! I'm about 8 or 9 in my lovely school uniform in the back garden. Sadly, I still have those knees! This photo makes me laugh A LOT!

I've been tagged on Flickr to list 16 random facts about myself. I'm not altogether sure what I think about tagging. Sometimes when bloggers say they've been tagged, it sounds like a chore they've been given. But this wasn't a chore at all. In fact, I'd been dying to do this one for weeks, as it had been doing the rounds on Flickr! Every time I saw a new contact write their list, I'd be thinking 'Tag me! Tag me!'

I don't know if that makes me self-obsessed. Possibly. I had way more than 16 facts I thought about sharing, but these were the random 16 I chose.

1. I went to an all-girls school. When I started it was compulsory to wear those hats (as in the photo). We also had indoor and outdoor shoes, and we had to wear bottle green knickers with our name tag in them! (And yes, the teachers did check - twice a year!)

2. I love cats, and would love to own one, but I'm allergic to them (as is Mr Kitsch). About the time of the photo above, my family adopted a stray black and white cat. My brothers called her Kipper. I used to sneeze a lot but never realised I was allergic to cats until I left home.

3. Other childhood pets included George the Budgie, Amy the Rabbit, Sandy the Hamster and some short-lived goldfish. When I was at college, I had a beautiful mauve-grey budgie called Bianca, and nearly got thrown out of the student hostel because she chewed the wallpaper.

4. I went to art college after school, to study graphics (mainly illustration), but I found the experience left me with little or no confidence in my work. After college I was unemployed for 18 months and then took a dead-end office job.

5. The only good thing about that dead-end office job was that it led eventually to my meeting Mr Kitsch.

6. I am the youngest of 5 children. I think this is the reason for the next one....

7. I don't have any children and have never wanted to for a moment. You can go off families, when there are seven people in the house! (And my family are all as mad as badgers!)

8. I also never wanted to get married. Mr Kitsch and I always joked that the only thing that could tempt us, would be an Elvis impersonator in Vegas. When we finally went on holiday to Las Vegas, we decided we would get married, just for a laugh. We couldn't arrange Elvis, though. So we got married in a stretch limo in a drive-thru chapel, dressed in Star Trek uniforms (classic style, of course!), that we'd bought the previous day at the Star Trek Experience.

9. I have collected toys all my adult life. I suspect that toy collectors are trying to regain some kind of perfect childhood they think they missed out on. I think that's probably true for me.

10. I also used to collect 1960s comics. Mainly US comics like Spiderman and Batman, and old romance comics, but I also like British cartoons and comics, like the Beano, Rupert Bear, Giles, and Thelwell. I also love Tintin, the Moomins. Popeye (the old ones), Krazy Kat, Charles Addams, etc. Eventually, I downsized my comic collection and went on to other addictions. (Dolls, kitsch, religious icons, tiki, handbags, jewellery, art & pop culture books, film, TV, vintage china, craft supplies, etc. etc.)

11. Yes, I am addicted to ebay.

12.I HATE windy weather. When I used to walk to work every day, my colleagues knew I would arrive in a foul mood when it was windy. By the time, I'd rescued my scarf twenty times, and got the hair out my eyes a hundred times, I would be effing and blinding at the wind like a crazy bag-lady!

13. My hair has not been its natural colour since I was about 19.

14. I am deaf in one ear

15. For a short time, in the early 1990s, Mr Kitsch and I (unsuccessfully) ran a comedy club in Bristol. Our compere was a student called Simon Pegg. Yes, that Simon Pegg, later of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and How to Lose Friends...

16. I am a lazy perfectionist. This is a contradictory and stressful combination!

if you've got this far, thanks for reading my random facts. And many thanks to femaletrouble2 for tagging me!