Recently, my fellow Bandita Donna MacMeans tagged me for the eight random facts thing. So here we go!
1. I'm a classical music nut. Never ask me a question about classical music or I will bore you rigid with why Ravel should be an essential part of everyone's life. I suspect even Ravel would get sick of the topic!
2. When they re-released Lawrence of Arabia which I'd never seen until then, I went to see it three times in one week. But then I've always had a huge crush on Peter O'Toole and, hey, it was like getting a free set of steak knives with the deal because Omar was pretty spectacular in that too!
3. I do a great Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights impersonation. Cats from miles around start yowling. It's fab!
4. When I was a kid, I fell in the pool at the local Marineland when I was trying to feed the dolphins.
5. When I traveled in the UK for the first time, I had a job selling perfume knock-offs in soapstone jars to tourists at Covent Garden market in London.
6. I've always wanted to learn Russian.
7. Because I grew up on an avocado farm, I can discourse at length about avocadoes. It's almost as relentless as the Ravel conversation!
8. I have been through the entire British Museum. Every room. Every vase. Every mummy. It took me six months of dogged return visits but I felt like Rocky on top of those steps when I finally got to the last room!
OK, that's me. I now tag...Annie West, Trish Morey, Vanessa Barneveld, Amanda McCabe, Nicola Cornick, Yvonne Lindsay, Sharon Arkell, Nalini Singh.
Have fun, girls!
27 comments:
Avacadoes and Ravel? Not together in the same conversation, surely! Actually, my love of classical music comes from having played violin for 10 years in school. I am quite fond of pieces written for violin. ;-)
Also, I make wonderful guacamole and could eat avacadoes any time of day. Hm. Dallas. Guacamole. Margaritas. I feel a party coming on!
I'm afraid Torville and Dean killed Ravel for me *grin*.
But Peter O'Toole ... yum ... especially with Audrey Hepburn (let's just pause for a moment to appreciate the most beautiful, elegant and charming woman ever) in How to Steal a Million. Those eyes! Almost as wonderful as my hockey player hero *drool*
I'm up for guacamole in Dallas - but I'll have a Mojito please!
I'm LOL, Anna over the Kate Bush comment. Even Kate Bush can barely sing that song!
I have such a bad voice I'm afraid the cats for miles around would keel over dead if I tried a stunt like that! :-)
Foanna,
EVERY room of the British Museum?!?!
GAAAHHH! I'm sooo jealous!
AC
who prefers Beethoven to Ravel
Caren, I was a little girl who wanted to be a ballerina (luckily for the world of dance, I discovered writing) and I played the piano from when I was five years old and I think all that exposure to beautiful music just indoctrinated me. Avocadoes - yum!
Actually, V Anna, I LOVE T&D, especially when he chucks her over the ice at the end.
I love HTSAM - I blogged about it in this month's favorite things on my site if you want to read a really gushing reaction:
http://www.annacampbell.info/fave%20things.html
Deb, perhaps we should consider a duet ;-)
Beethoven? Good choice, AC! Actually I like an awful lot of music - Herb Alpert is up there and I discovered Mika when I went down to stay with my crit partner a few weeks ago.
Great review, Anna, of HTSAM. And the very reasons that you love it are the ones that make Charade one of my all-time faves. (Yum - Cary Grant). Interesting that three of my top 10 favourite films are Cary's!
Oh, Anna, I love Herb Alpert! And Mika is just a guilty pleasure - he's so fun!
And Vrai Anna, I adore Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn both. I rushed out to see "Venus", which many did not care for because of the May-late-late-December story line. But I thought him adorable as a very old man with a penchant for women. And the girl was so undeserving (even if she did quote Franz Ferdinand - the band, not the Emperor *g*). Wonderful!
And Deb Marlowe, I want to hear you perform some Kate Bush right away. We can do an easy one, though, like "Running Up That Hill". I love that song!
Hey, Anna, Deb and I are rooming together in Dallas. Maybe we can kidnap her, ply her (and you) with adult beverages, then have a Kate Bush-off in the baaa!
Hey, if you guys have a guacamole and margarita party in Dallas, can I crash? I'll be good, I promise. I won't even try to sing Kate Bush.
Add me to the list Beethoven grrls.
Kate, singing Kate Bush is actually how you DO crash our parties! Deb, we have a WH date in Dallas. Ooh, I love Franz Ferdinand. There's something about British pop, isn't there, Ms Smith? Kate S and I bonded over our mutual adoration of the Cure (yes, we are children of the '80s!). V Anna, you've got to love Cary, haven't you? Charade has one of the best scripts ever.
there's actually a song called wuthering heights? gosh (i only know the book) :P
ooo, anna, could you elaborate more on the fall-in-dolphin-pool incident?? hehe~~
Ai Yin, you absolutely have to hear WH. It's even better with the video where a very wild-looking KB dances around on the moors. Fab stuff. See if you can find it on UTube. Actually, just found it for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfGc4wcil2g
Actually, the Marineland thing wasn't as dramatic as it sounds. At least it wasn't during a show or anything! They had these poor dolphins out in a shallow swimming pool outside the gates to advertise the ones inside (I shudder to think of it now) and the water was all mossy and therefore the sides of the pool. I went too close when I was about ten and just lost my footing and in I went. The worst part was the horrible smell! I'm a reasonable swimmer so I wasn't in danger - although apparently dolphins will help drowning people to stay afloat. Perhaps I should have posted as one of my facts that I'm a klutz from way back!
It's a date, Anna! Although my dh is begging me never to sing in public!
The Cure! If plied with enough adult beverages, I might break out into some retro Cure.
oh wow, she IS wild-looking. And very energetic. Apparently this is her debut song.
Aww... speaking of swimming, can you swim without goggles? (i can't, but my mother can, surprisingly) and is the dolpin rescueing myth actually true? :P
AnnaC wrote, "When I was a kid, I fell in the pool at the local Marineland when I was trying to feed the dolphins."
That's precisely the sort of information as a mother I don't want to hear, when a week from today, we're paying gobs of money to feed dolphins in Hawaii.
(Yeah! Hawaii! Yeah!)
Avacadoes—yum, yum! Our fam's huge fans of that fruit.
AUDREY the hep woman! I've seen My Fair Lady enough times to be able to quote pages of dialogues if you start me of at any point. She's elegance incarnate. Oooh!
AnnaC: Oh, good you reminded me. I love the "Fav Things" part of your site. Yep, been through every one of them.
I'm sure Caren the resident engineer can whip up a white noise machine that'll block all the yowling, er, mellifluous singing from those Banditas so inclined.
But I confess: I was very active in choral ensembles in my twenties.
Beethoven and Mozart for me from the classical period. The Ninth and the Requiem...OMG the chorus!!
These days, however, Bach really floats my boat where writing's concerned. All that gorgeous polyphonous music...
Goodness, clearly I'm among friends when it comes to the classical music thing! Fantastic. As I say, I like ALL kinds of music if it's got a bit of passion and guts to it. Keira, I'm so with you about Bach. I used to hate it. Thought it was the most boring stuff out. And then I fell in love with the double violin concerto - the slow movement still makes me want to cry. And I think he's now my favourite composer. Funny how one work of art can be the doorway into a whole new universe, isn't it? I can't write to stuff with words (even in a foreign language) so I listen to a lot of classical music and soundtracks when I'm working.
Good luck with the dolphins and the kids! I'll think of you as I'm tucking into scones and clotted cream on my British trip! Hmm, maybe you should come with me instead. All that Regency stuff!
Ah, Deb, I'm looking forward to meeting you more and more. We can go from WH to Love Cats and really frighten the locals!
Ai Yin, I certainly can swim without goggles!
I was tagged by Anna and discovered Romance Bandits in the process. Love the site! Thanks, Anna, and I can’t want to hear your version of Wuthering Heights on your upcoming trip. My cats can join in!
Here are my 8 random facts:
I have worked on a steam railway in Wales selling refreshments to visitors but my worst job was sticking price tags on shoes on the night shift in a factory.
When I’m not writing, one of my hobbies is training guide dog puppies. The problem is that they are so cute I never want to give them back!
I’ve been on the roof of Ely Cathedral.
My husband has a couple of pirates of the Caribbean in his family tree. (Real ones, not Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom, sadly.)
My comfort food of choice is white chocolate and cheese and onion crisps, but not together.
I’m a huge fan of old BBC costume dramas like Poldark and Upstairs Downstairs and once met Robin “Poldark” Ellis in person. I was so stunned by how gorgeous he was that I just stood there staring at him and pouring my drink all over his shoes.
Talking of shoes, I love, love, love sexy shoes (like some of the Banditas!)
I’d like to live in Scotland. I go there every year and always pick up details of houses for sale. One day…
Nicola Cornick
Hi Nicola! So glad you decided to share your eight facts with us here. And what great facts they are! Does anyone else remember Poldark? And real pirates in the family tree? How kewl! Glad you've discovered the banditas. You'll have to call back. Actually, just to give you some warning, I'm hoping to interview you as a guest blogger before the year's done and dusted. And your fate is sealed now I've read your eight random facts. You're definitely an interesting target! And we can talk about your fabulous books at length(I'm a great fan of Nicola's writing - she does the most luscious heroes!).
At least with you it was dolphins. My dh fell in the shark tank at Seaworld when he was 4 or 5. They fished him out before he even realized what he'd done, but I think his parents' hearts stopped for a moment!
And you can sing Wuthering Heights to me any time, Foanna. Great post!
Thanks, Christine. The idea of your DH in the shark tank gives me the willies! I just got some fish-stink slime over me. I was never actually in danger!
AnnaC: You've got to got to got to blog at length with a ton of pictures about your trip. I'm going to be thinking about you and imagining what you're seeing. WOW!
Keira, what a great idea. That solves my blogging subject problems for the next little while. And given I'm going to be doing a lot of research over there, it's relevant for people who are thinking of writing historicals. I can do a regular spot on the stately homes I go to. I love old houses! Hoping to make Chatsworth this trip.
AnnaC: Country houses--oh yes. Interiors, please. Architecture, furniture. And oh, the libraries!! The parterres, gardens, and follies.
If you go to Chatsworth, I doubt we'll ever hear back from you again. You'll be living there or camping out on the grounds. :) I've heard it's glorious.
Are you visiting any Georgian town houses in London?
Hey, Kate Bush fans! If you want to check out someone who is very reminiscent of young Kate, check out My Brightest Diamond. Shara is awesome and so incredibly unique, like Kate has always been!
It's true - she's an expert on avocadoes. I couldn't believe it when I discovered an avo tree in our backyard last year. I got to put Anna through her horticultural paces.
Apparently, avocadoes ripen on the tree, so I mustn't sit around and wait for them to fall to the ground. I have to climb up and pick them. Of course, all the avos are growing on the top branches. (Anna, do you realise how gigantic this tree is now?! I hope you're not joking about climbing it.)
Fun post!
x Vanessa
Keira, because I've been so flat out, I haven't really worked out an itinerary for London yet. But I'm definitely doing the V&A and the Museum of London and Sir John Soane's House and Dennis Severs's house which apparently is an amazing experience. I also want to go to Burlington House and Kenwood if I get a chance. I'd also really like to go to Lord Leighton's house which is Victorian but I really like his paintings.
I might even manage a few day trips outside London to a few houses. My main house experience is going to be around Oxfordshire. So watch this space and I'll report back.
Caren, will definitely check out that band. I was doing WH at school when KB's WH came out and the two are inexorably entwined in my mind. Also, and this will be no surprise, I had a huge crush on Heathcliff! Even as an adult, I can see why he's a psycho, but there's something about his passion for Catherine (awful woman that she is) that gets me in.
You know, Vanessa, I could have been joking about climbing the tree... Send the cats up with a pair of secateurs. When we sent avos to market, we used to cut them off when they were unripe, leaving about half an inch of stem and then they ripen perfectly happily.
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