Stuff you may like to know. Or not

Life in the home of Home Office Mum is busy. As always. I seem to go through these crazy swings where I feel as though I can take on the world, build a business empire, achieve anything...to wanting to just lie down in a quiet place, have a rest and say 'sod it, it's all too hard.'

Which is why my blog posts are starting to resemble buses in West Berkshire - seldom seen and when they are, they trundle along aimlessly without really going anywhere.

But I have been tagged by not one, but two lovely bloggers so this post is for them. First of all, the ever gorgeous Metropolitan Mum has asked me to rummage in my photo files, go to the oldest folder, find the 10th picture in it and tell the story behind it. So here it is. Wish it was something slightly more visually stimulating.

In December 2002, husband and I decided to bid farewell to our time in the USA by driving all the way across the Southern states, from coast to coast. This was in the early part of the journey as the sign says South Carolina. Had I been asked for the 50th photo in the file, I would have been somewhere around Texas, but the pictures all look pretty similar. Long, long, long stretches of road. In case you hadn't spotted this on a map yet, the USA is quite a big place. It took us four days to drive across Texas. So we have a whole photo album of cars driving on the wrong side of the road. You can imagine our friend's joy when we invited them around to see our holiday snaps.

The second tag I received was from someone living in the US no less. Nappy Valley Girl, who lives in Long Island but formally of a different wetter island, has kindly given me the Beautiful Blog Award, which comes with a lovely logo, but I can't figure out how to copy it and am time pressed with starving children demanding breakfast. I am to reveal 7 things about myself that you might not know. Due to starving children, I'm going to have to keep this brief:

1. I am terrified of caterpillars. Particularly silkworms. They literally make my skin crawl and give me a violent urge to gag. My children obviously make a point of trying to find caterpillars so that they can watch their mother shriek and run.

2. My first job was a being a PR poppie (that's an Afrikaans term for...well how do you explain poppie? I suppose an African luvvie dahling is as close a description as any) for the South African Blood Transfusion Service. Part of my job was attending blood donor clinics (wearing a nurses uniform), pricking people's fingers and doing the iron tests. Not quite sure how this was helping our reputation with the public, but there you are.

3. Part of the aforementioned job also involved me having to tie posters for blood donor clinics onto street poles along busy motorways. There I'd be in my little nurses outfit, reaching up to tie the posters on, causing my skirt to creep ever higher, with all the charming, gentlemanly males of the country driving past, hooting and cheering for the nurse poppie on the side of the road. Who says PR isn't glamorous?

4. I am allergic to seafood and in one particularly dramatic incident, I had to be 999d out of a fancy restaurant in Manhattan during a PR launch. That probably wasn't a career highlight either. There appears to be a theme emerging here.

5. I make very good lasagne. I'm not saying it's the best in the world - because that would be boastful - but I can say hand on heart that my lasagne is pretty bloody tasty. There are three secrets to it and I will share them with you here (obviously if you tell anyone I shall have to kill you). One - always cook the sauce for a long time. Two - always add carrots but chopped small. Three - crumble cornflakes on top for the ultimate crunch.

6. I once stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Bali for a week all paid for by British Telecom. This was probably one of the genuinely more glamorous parts of being in PR. While on another British Telecom PR lark in Bangkok, I got taken to a titty bar. It was awkward. Do you look at the (male) client and discuss how to build the BT brand or do you look at the ladies on stage? Seemed rude to talk during the show but I didn't really want to look at other people's bosoms.

7. I once had a job cleaning heavy machinery (diggers etc) at a dockyard in Rotterdam, Holland. Don't ask.

Many of these seem to have been about past jobs. Didn't plan that, just happened. Right, I should pass this onto other bloggers but unless I get cereal down the throats of these children in minutes, there is going to be a riot.