My Interests

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Writing: It's hard to remember a time when I wasn't making up stories (not at all the same thing as telling lies). I never go anywhere without a notebook and pen (it's company for the book of the preceding paragraph).

Over the last few years I've started writing Star Trek fanfic. I'm not sure if it's one step forward or two steps back, but it keeps my hand in. I've also revived a teenage interest in haiku, an ancient Japanese verse form of (usually) seventeen syllables.

Language and languages: I think this probably fuelled my interest in reading, and not the other way about. I can still remember the sense of wonder I felt when I heard the word mild for the first time. My mother was talking about the weather. I rolled this strange word around in my mind, and will forever associate it with the yellow wallpaper in our dining-room. I was very young: I had not yet started school. I can also remember how puzzled I was at her use of 'the other day' to describe something that had happened weeks ago.

I 'suffer' (if you can call it that: I think it's cool) from something called synaesthesia. Put simply, it means that the sensory impressions are mixed up. In my case, I 'see' words in colour as I speak or write. It's not a conscious process; it is nothing to do with context or meaning (except for the names of colours, most of which, but not all, are the colour they describe), and certainly nothing to do with the colour of the ink. It seems to be linked to the sound of a word or letter. For example, cool is a blue-grey word, but so is fuel. Some of the colours are indescribable. Until a few years ago I thought everyone saw words like this. But then, up until a few years ago, I thought everyone dreamed in colour.

Music: Both my parents are 'musical'. My mother had a wonderful voice and was always singing, and my father played the drums in a band. They both loved dancing as well. My disability, although mild, precludes my dancing (except alone behind drawn curtains), and, for the same reason, the only instrument I can play is the harmonica. Larry Adler I ain't. I've just bought a set of panpipes. It's tougher than it looks!!! Georgy Zhamfir I ain't.

My taste in music is eclectic: from baroque to blues; from medieval to mambo.

Theatre:

Cinema (in particular film noir).

Watching cricket, or should that be Cricket (imagine reverential note in voice).

My most recent passion (well the most recent passion on which I'm prepared to go public), is Kabbalah.

I also admit to being a bit of a Trekker, and Homer J Simpson groupie.

What else? Well, I am currently attempting to prove, by empirical research, the theory that red wine is a powerful antioxidant, and a weapon in the war against ageing. Now I come to think of it, a little more research is called for. Corkscrew anyone?

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