Vivienne has tagged me for the meme which is going around at the moment.
Here goes.
1. Five jobs I've had?
Remover of rust from paint tins when I was a student. I worked at a paint factory and the tins had been stored outside, so we had to use sandpaper to remove the rust so they could be sold!
Drystone walling and fencing. Six strand stock fence with butterfly tension? No problem.
Telesales at Sky. One customer phoned and asked about the "'late-night" programmes on a particular channel. I thought he was complaining about them, but he was actually asking me how to subscribe!
Nurse. All sorts of Nurse. 25 years worth.
Bar work during the Edinburgh Festival. Fastest weight loss ever, 12 pounds in three weeks. I was shattered.
2. What was I doing ten years ago?
Ten years. Well things have changed rather a lot in ten years.
I was a newly single parent of seven and nine year old boys. I was a nurse in a Neonatal Unit, and worked 12 hour shifts rotating onto night duty. This meant that a friend (another SP) did a sleepover at my house with her daughter while I worked the night-shift component of my rota, and I slept while they were at school. My boys went to her house after school on the day-shift part. We did 13 x 12 hour shifts in four weeks so I did have time off with the children but it wasn't a lot of fun. I had £23 a week for food and household laundry type shopping, and pretty much everything else as well. I went around Asda with a calculator, it's amazing how many different meals you can make with 22p bags of economy pasta. My husband (Fegrig) was horrified a year later when he was making packed lunches for school and my elder son told him that he needed to dilute the OJ half-and-half, and that two slices of skinny ham on a sandwich was enough.
The house was a building site. I had been left (literally) mid-project. Partially plasterboarded walls, wires dangling and bare concrete floors. There wasn't much I could do about the wires, which were safe but unsightly, so I got to work on the rest of the house and painted every single wall and ceiling white, I wanted to reclaim every single surface as mine.
The nuts and bolts of just keeping going were awful, but I did feel free of a huge painful burden which had been dumped on me, so it wasn't all bad.
Life is SO much better now.
3. What are five things on my to-do list today?
Well there are two lists, a work list and a non-work list.
The work list says
1. Dye 5kg fibre (this is quite a lot!)
2. Print, pack and post parcels
3. Put the TdeF options in the shop.
4. Order yarn.
5. Order blue bags because I've only got 17 left!
The non-work list says
1. Make something nice for tea because my mum is coming.
2. Listen to the Archers.
3. Do the quick crossword on the back of The Guardian g2 section.
4. 20 minutes on the erg... the rowing machine.
5. Plant the bluebell bulbs my neighbour gave me yesterday.
4. Snacks I enjoy?
Olives, twiglets, marmite-on-ricecakes, salted crisps (flavoured ones are an abomination), peanuts, bombay mix, sardines on toast - more of a meal really, might have that for lunch.
Cheeeeeeeeeeese.
5. Places I have lived?
In no particular order... Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bingley, Newnham, London, Birmingham, Kidderminster.
I flirted with the idea of working in Zurich, but decided against it in the end.
6. What would I do if I was billionnaire?
Like Vivienne I'm going to assume Bill Gates type levels of billionaireishness.
This is quite tricky. I mean a million pounds is easier, isn't it?
Billions... hmmm.
Okay. I am not technically minded, I can work a mac (sort of) and run a website, I can knit (which is engineering of a kind) and spin, but ask me about the workings of the internal combustion engine and my eyes glaze over.
Last year on Dragon's Den I saw this.
It's a water filtration system which is powered by the movement of the wheels.
You can see the DD clip here. If you didn't see it, do watch. It's the first philanthropic product on DD.
The designers, Red Button Design have gone from strength to strength and won all sorts of awards.
They are part of Engineers Without Borders, a student organisation which is worldwide, and focuses on appropriate technology to solve problems in areas of the world which do not have our good fortune.
The charity in the UK which mirrors this closest is Practical Action. Their website is fascinating, and they do all sorts of good stuff like developing biomass stoves for women in Darfur.
I think that if I had billions, I would set up an integrated programme which encouraged this low tech, sustainable engineering approach at lots of levels, from primary school right though to college courses and University research. The teenagers could visit the Universities and the College students and Professors could talk to the six year olds. A billion pounds is a finite amount, but the difference this could make would be infinite.
And yes, I'd make knitting a compulsory part of the curriculum from 5-18 as well!
All that right-brain, left-brain stuff has to be good for you, doesn't it?
No knitting today for me though, I have fibre to dye!
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PS. I forgot... I have to tag people.
I'm going to tag anyone who doesn't have a blog.
Leave your answers in the comments!
PPS. TdeF packs are in the Shop. They have their own section here.
