About Me

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was born of poor but honest (or should that be poor because honest?) parents on 18th March, an hour and forty minutes too late for Saint Patrick's Day: hence my given name.

I am of Irish/Italian/French origin. There are a couple of other ingredients in the stock, but those are the main flavours. Nevertheless, I am English because I am, in the words of Rupert Brooke, 'A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, / Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, / A body of England's, breathing English air, / Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.' (The Soldier, November-December 1914). Anyway, it's simpler. For more about my complicated ancestry, click here.

I am a native of Dartford, Kent (because that's where the hospital was), but in the south-east of England (for the non-geographically-minded, that's the bottom right-hand corner of the map). Other notable Dartfordians include Wat Tyler, who led the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and Mick Jagger. I am the youngest of the three!

Holidays were largely spent on the strange and beautiful Romney Marsh.

When I was eleven, my parents moved to the Isle of Thanet, in the extreme south-east of the county. Being loving parents they took me with them.

My schooldays were passed at the Ursuline Convent in Westgate-on-sea, Kent, which, sadly, no longer exists in the form in which I knew it. My school was a boarding school for girls (I was a day girl [sulks]). A few years ago it amalgamated with The Abbey School: a boarding and day school for [GASP] BOYS!!! Now, I understand, it's a comprehensive school. O, sic transit Gloria Wossername!

Check out the school message board at Friends Reunited.

I am a graduate of the University of Durham. My degree is in French with subsidiary Spanish; not such a doss as it might sound, since I didn't grow up bilingual. To avoid any confusion with Duke University, N. Carolina, I should point out that Durham is in the north-east of England (about as far from Thanet as you can get and still be in England).

It is not only Durham that I honoured with my presence. I lived, for a time, in Snowdonia. Such a dull and solid-sounding name for somewhere so wild and elemental. Its Welsh name is Eryri ('high land'), and eryr means eagle. I never stood in the place of the eagles, but I could lift up mine eyes to the hills each day.

It was not hard to believe, in that mythic landscape, that, a few miles from where I lived, a woman had been made out of flowers to be wife to a man she could not love.

It is a strange thing when overwhelming beauty becomes part of the small change of your life. Perhaps I should have become accustomed to it had I lived there longer. Perhaps that is why fate decreed that I should not.

And so, here I am again, in the exotic Isle of Thanet (where there are no mountains).

I live in Birchington, which has the distinction of being the largest village in England, and is generally considered a very agreeable place to live. Note the passive tense, hehehe. Smug is a word that comes to mind. Our village, sorry, Village, has a population of around 15,000. That makes it a town in my book, but I'll probably be lynched for saying it.

It's the sort of place that makes you ponder such deep philosophical questions as 'Is there life before death?

It can boast of no notable births that I'm aware of, but there was one notable death, that of the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1882. He came to Bichington (hehehe - I've just seen the typo, or should that be Freudian slip?) to die and seems to have started a bit of a trend.

Birchington is mentioned in the Domesday Book, but its name is Saxon. In fact there has been a settlement here since the Bronze Age. Many of the Bronze Age artefacts found at Minnis Bay are now on display at the jewel in Birchington's crown, the Powell-Cotton museum at Quex House. It's a wonderful place. I never tire of visiting.

Want to see what the weather's like in sunny Birchington? Check it out at Ken Schneider's page.

There's not a lot more to tell. I'm five foot nought, eyes of blue. Tsk, tsk - that doesn't rhyme, but I refuse to add two inches to my height. I like being small.

I'm a member of Mensa. And, yes, I've heard all the Mencap jokes.

I would love to trace my family tree, but haven't the time or the resources at the moment.

You can read about my other interests here.

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