Five things you probably do not know about me
Posted on Dec 28th, 2006
by 
Sandra
Sandra
Well I trust Donan, who "tagged" me to do this blog, that this isn't some awful spammy kind of thing - and hey, why not?
1. I have a licence to own a handgun in Canada.
To get this I took a weekend course on how to use and care for a handgun. The gun I used was what they call a "police special", a .38 calibre revolver.
The guy who taught this course told me that women make better marksmen (markswomen?), because they have a steadier hand - something to do with the way our hearts beat; & that it's okay to shoot people but never okay to shoot animals. His daughter was (is? - this is a long time ago) a famous anti-fur activist, and he was an ex cop. The course was a lot of fun, and I've never touched a gun since.
2. I once served Princess Diana tea.
In my 20's I had a brief spell inbetween mime gigs working for an upmarket catering company in London, and she was star guest at a small event. It was around the time the news was full of her problems with Charles and her eating disorders. She was lovely, very polite, shy and sweet.
She was born in the same year I was, two months before me. She died on my 36th birthday, 31 August, 1996. It was shocking, even though I was not a particular fan. She had come to represent something very fine - she had become a kind of archetype of feminine beauty. strength, fragility and compassion.
Princess Diana
3. I once owned a 1969 BSA Starfire.
That's a motorbike. It was given to me for my birthday by my ex. I can't remember which one (which birthday, not which ex) - thirty something? I also did a weekend course to get my motorcycle licence - and had about 200% more fun than I expected. I drove my BSA around the carpark around our studio, but that was about it for my motorcycle days. It made a lovely dojo ornament until my ex and I split up, when I bequeathed the bike to his daughter, Ilona.
1969 BSA Starfire
4. I co-created a play called "Suzi Got Her Lips Tattooed"
An episodic, cabaret style theatre piece on the theme of female stereotypes, miscommunication between the sexes and other such delights. It played in several theatres in Toronto, was well reviewed and bothered some of the audience so much they walked out or burst into tears. I had various roles in the play, including the 'watcher' of the events, a kind of barometer of female feelings. I wore my fingerless boxing mits and worked with hands and legs at a heavy bag, well used and wrapped in gaffer tape (lent to me by the ex who gave me the BSA above); in another piece, a kind of 'fashion show' of stereotypes, I played the St. Tropez bikini clad sun worshipper, a dominatrix and a cowgirl (hot pants, red-checked shirt tied above my navel etc). I had a lot of fun, more than I was supposed to given the politics of the play.
CatBoxing
5. Am I the only person to make a seagull pie?
I was 14. We were living in a valley near Glencolumbkille on the north west coast of Ireland, I had given up school, was weaving tweed and studying ancient history at home and the self-designated cook for my family who were battling the elements trying to make our house liveable. Donegal winds can be so fierce it could take 3 of us to close the front door, and if you inadvertently left a wheelbarrow outside overnight, it could be four fields away in the morning.
Anyway, we used to get the discarded food from the Glenbay hotel in Glencolumbkille to make into compost for my brother's vegetable garden. The smell was a magnet for seagulls. My uncle Robin was living in a tin roofed shed behind our house, and the seagulls would fly up to this roof and make a huge racket. One morning he got so mad he picked up a rock and threw it at them. Killed one outright. He was going to dump it on the compost pile, but said I'd cook it. I tried to find a recipe in the Larousse Gastronomique but there was nothing under 'seagull'. I figured it was a kind of 'game', so went that route. My mother was making elderberry wine, so I opened a bottle and marinaded the bird for a few days (after plucking it etc). I baked it under a layer of shortcrust pastry with some vegetables. It was good, chewy I seem to remember.
hmm, pigeon, quail, no seagull!
The truth is I have such a big ego I'd like to tell you 100 things you might not know about me....
My five zaadster friends I 'tag' are:
Michael
Ma rig Pa
MaryW
Seth
Dana
Access: PublicTagged with: fivethings, five things, 5things, tagged, BSA starfire, seagull pie, Suzi Got Her Lips Tattoeed, guns, Princess Diana
5things
August 2008 
And I have such a big smile every time I hear from you, I’d like to hear those 100 things.
Hmm well, you may regret it!
I'll start slow…
- I had a crush on David Cassidy when I was 12. Mind you I also liked Cary Grant.
- The first single I ever bought (pre teen?) was A Horse With No Name by America. I still love it.
- I used to help my mother with her sculpture when I was a toddler. I particularly liked sniffing the lacquer thinners she coated her copper pieces with… (hmm, early signs of an addictve personality??). I also drank the dregs of the cocktails at her gallery openings.
- I once made a trifle ( traditional English pudding) that weighed 30 pounds.
- my first job (12 ish?) was washing people's hair in a hairdressers in Glastonbury. I was terrified, and squirted conditioner down one of my 'ladies' bosoms. She wasn't amused.
- another job I had was scraping the chewing gum off of a supermarket floor.
- when we lived in Donegal sometimes I only changed my clothes once in few days because it wast too cold to get out of them.
- My childhood dream about what to do 'when I grew up' was to return to Greece and save all the cats. This was after my dream to be a ballerina.
- If I had another life I'd like to have a voice like Lisa Gerrard.
- I once cuddled Robert Downey jr. (he's lovely and it went no further).
- My first stage performance was as the fox in Little Red Riding Hood ( I was 8).
- The first prize I ever won was a coffee cake playing musical chairs.
- I was so unhappy at my first school I was taken out of it - all because my teacher, Sister Dimpner, used to yell at the naughty kids. I was not one of them, and when my mother took me to see her about it, she squished me into her large chest and said she loved me. But I still didn't want to go back ( or perhaps this meeting increased my terror).
- I love cashmere ( who doesn't?)
- I like knives and swords. Beautiful ones.
- I love sleeping outside at night under the stars ( on a comfy mattress in a warm climate).
- My first friends at school ( the same one with Sister Dimpner - I was 6) were Barty and Anthony. I was shunned by the other girls because they told me girls should not have boys as friends.
- I once camped on a glacier in the Himalayas. I was with my boyfriend, Don. We woke up in the morning to the sound of bleating intermixed with a strange wooshing sound like the air going out of balloons. We looked out of the tent, and we were surrounded by sheep with huge blown up stomachs - tottering about, flat on their backs, rolling around the ice. Their herder was poking their stomachs with a knife to let the gas out. (They had eaten something they shouldn't have). Very Bruegelian.
- I once tried to deal rubies in Asia. That is a LONG story.
- There is more but it's bed time!
SOOO glad that i tapped you for this. definitely brightened my night…still looking BTW
So wonderful. May you have a very interesting life is no curse as the story goes for you it is a blessing.
A few people have asked for an update… I've managed 21 so far. Do you really want more? I think it's time for a new blog. But, well, let's see what happens.
- I was given a hedgehog for a pet when I was about 7 or 8 in Greece. It had been found on the side of the road and was 'hibernating'. I put it in a box with some straw and a blanket, and waited hopefully. For months. And months. After a while it became quite smelly. It was not hibernating at all…
- My second stage performance was as “Helen” in Euripides' Trojan Women. It's a bit of a dirge, full of wailing women in rags. I had a sparky scene with Menelaus in the middle, and wore gold. It was the highlight of the play - not because of my acting, but because of the sheer relief for the audience. I had a longish monologue, which I always totally jumbled up but no-one seemed to notice.
- My grandmother - the one above who had a stroke and went into the land of the Ding Dongs and Johnny Noo Noo's, told me a few things to help me become a woman. One of them was: “Don't tell a man your faults, he'll find out soon enough.”
- My proudest ( remembered ) moment as a child was when I was about 6. My brother and I were scrabbling up a steep slope beside a river near our house in Johannesburg. He told me “you climb as good as a boy.” I basked in this praise for days.
- I once worked in an all night restaurant in Covent Garden called Sunrise Restaurant ( one of the first all nighters?). One of those awful restaurants that served 'Surf & Turf'. I often worked double shifts. It was illegal to sell alcohol after a certain hour, so we would fill up teapots with our customer's preferred tipple. The nightclub Stringfellows was nearby, and Peter Stringfellow often came in with some young thing and take her downstairs to the darkest corner, and well.. you know. He would leave hundred pound tips. Call girls came in around 4 a.m. looking tired. They came in twos. They would pool their coins and ask me what they might get for it. The chef had usually left in a big huff by this time, leaving me to wait on table and cook food, so I'd go in the kitchen and make them a big breakfast and tell them it's 'on the house'.
- I have very small feet, and very small ears. (including very small earlobes. Does this make me stupid? I believe large earlobes are supposed to be a sign of wisdom.)
- For my second wedding, I was dressed entirely in black. We got married in a public park in Toronto. The minister was a woman who didn't mention God once, and later at the party asked me where she could buy fish-net stockings.
- I love very high thread count sheets.
- I have shaken the hand of the Dalai Lama. ( Along with 300 or so other people). It was in Dharamsala, when he was giving one of his public appearances. I can't say I felt anything particularly special, but watching him interact with the Tibetan refugees was amazing. He seemed to send out palpable love to them. A friend of ours (Victor Chan) was spending a lot of time with him, and had taken a number of videos of the Dalai Lama talking with various people in private. It was by watching these I got a real sense of the man - highly intelligent - in all ways, incredibly loving, and very funny.
- In Ireland (at least when I was there) if a boy wants to be your boyfriend, he says: ” Do you want to go with me?” My first 'real' boyfriend was Irish. I was 14. I broke up with him the day we 'went'; because he was so nervous I could feel his heart thumping louder than mine. (And he kissed like an eel). We were much better as friends.
- I once had hair so long I could sit on it. I decided to cut it all off - and I mean all off, except for about an inch or so, in my - what? Late teens? Early twenties? - and see what happened. It was a revelation. I could no longer use it to hide behind, or to be attractive to men. I had to be myself.
- I have had 'group sex'. It was very boring.
- Some of my favourite moments are when my prejudices are proven wrong. On a London tube I once sat opposite a man covered in piercings, with filthy spiked hair. He looked grumpy and mean. An elderly woman got on the train. He shot out of his seat (he was the only one who did) and said in the sweetest voice: “please sit down.”
- I have hugged lepers. Leprosy is Hansen's disease. It is far less easy to catch than all the movies and stories make out - if you are reasonably healthy, and it is easy to treat, particularly if treated early. The sad thing is that people who get it are usually very poor, marginalised and malnourished. Many do not have easy access to treatment. It exists in first world countries as well as third world ones. One of the main impediments to cure is the social stigma of the disease.
- I used to have a fantasy of being a nun. Not so much the God part, but what I imagined as the quiet, the schedule, the simplicity.
- I was never baptised. Some of my childhood friends told me this meant I 'didn't exist'. When I told my mother this, she offered to baptise me. I wasn't old enough to be able to articulate to her that this wasn't, um, quite the same thing.
- Probably the weirdest thing I have ever eaten are sheeps balls. It was in Crete, at a restaurant, I was 8 ish. My brother said, “try this,” and I did, not knowing what it was. It was soft and vaguely fishy. I was furious with him when he told me. (They are called 'unmentionables' in Greek.)
- I wrote poetry as a child until my early twenties. One of the first ones was very short. I think I was about 12 when I wrote it:
“Time is forever engulfed by the Void”
- There are only two people in the world I will speak to on the telephone no matter WHAT is happening for me: my brother, and David.
- I often (usually…) stay in bed until 11 a.m. in the morning.
That's it for now, folks!
oh - my friend Mike here at zaadz sent me this, regarding my seagull pie entry : a link to some seagull recipe questions. Amazing!
Sandra:
Just skimmed through your blog. Quite delightful. It was nice to learn some more “things” about you.
Love,
Will