Posted by kathryn in Blogging

Kate from Veggie Friendly has tagged me for the meme – five things you didn’t know about me – so here goes.

The last time I ate meat, it was . . .

Reindeer, yup, I ate Rudolph. I gave up meat in 1992, haven’t eaten fish for the last ten years, but back in 1996 I was travelling around Europe. I spent some time in Norway, visiting the fjords and gazing on the spectacular landscape. My travelling companion knew a family there, who invited us for lunch, but my friend forgot to mention I was vegetarian. When we turned up the family had gone out of their way to prepare a Norwegian speciality for their Australian visitors – Reindeer Burgers. They were beautiful and kind people, who showed us around town, took us up to the mountains and had invited us into their home, so it would have been churlish and rude to say no, so I ate reindeer.

Ever since I was little, I’ve loved old Hollywood films

Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland, Fred and Ginger, Gregory Peck, James Stewart are all in my favourites category. I still love these old films now (in fact one of my Christmas presents was a copy of Notorious).

I’m originally from the UK

While I’ve lived in Australia for a long time and I’m a citizen, I was born just north of London in a place called Welwyn Garden City, but I grew up in Bournemouth, where my parents ran a small guest house. Back then it was quite a gentile place, full of elderly people, except in the summer when the town would fill up with foreign language students. Now Bournemouth is a big party town, full of pubs and clubs.

I hate making white sauces

I find them fussy and annoying, so I never cook anything which requires a white sauce.

Eczema led me to natural therapies

I started getting eczema when I was about seven and at first I didn’t think twice about controlling it using cortisone creams. In my early 20s though, I started to get fed up with the irregular and unexplained flare-ups, with using creams of varying strength and of seemingly having no control over my skin. This gradually led me to natural therapies, as I tried out a tonne of things to treat it. For me, cleaning up my diet, balancing my life and managing my stress levels are the keys.

Now, I rarely get any eczema, but when I do, it’s my early warning system – a sign I’m doing too much and taking my life too seriously. It’s actually a good thing, because it reminds me to pull back, eat properly, have some early nights and sort out those things that are playing on my mind.

I tag:

• Miss Cupcake
• Buy Organic
• Vanesscipes
• Two Second Memory

Update : I’m changing the tagged blog links to the completed memes as they’re posted.

30 January, 2007