15 Facts About Me

Months and months ago Rachel tagged me in a post on Instagram challenging me to share a selfie and 10 random facts about myself. And then I totally forgot about it until Sarah wrote a post recently with her facts. I've done fact posts before but I know I always enjoy reading other people's, so here goes trying to think of 15 new facts about myself.

1. My favourite subject at school was drama and I usually took the lead role in the school plays and musicals.

2. Show tunes are my not-at-all-guilty pleasure. I love listening to the Elaine Paige show on Radio 2 on Sunday afternoons, and on long car journeys will blast the soundtracks to Wicked and Rent while singing along at the top of my voice.

3. I also have a fondness for grime and, despite the incongruity of a 30-something white woman bopping along to Stormzy in a Ford Ka, it's another of my favourite driving soundtracks.

4. Speaking of age, I turn 40 next June and I am not at all happy about it. It sounds like such an enormous milestone (frankly, it just sounds so old!). So yeah, there's lots of denial of the ageing process going on around here at the moment.

5. I was once on local television talking about zines. I was only 17 and it was about as awkward as "teenager interviewed on local Bradford cable channel" sounds.

6. My mum is deaf, so I have (rudimentary) BSL skills. However, as she lost her hearing in her 50s, none of us are exactly fluent.

7. I have multiple diagnoses - Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Chronic Pain Syndrome - that impact on my life in various ways. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out how to get through the wedding and start my MA course without a combination of the three causing havoc.

8. I don't particularly like chocolate, and especially not chocolate cake.

9. The best gig I've ever been to was Joanna Newsom at Manchester Palace Theatre in 2010, closely followed by Joanna Newsom at Manchester Albert Hall in 2015. Whenever I see her live I spend the entire time completely rapt, so I'd heartily recommend trying to bag tickets when she next tours.

10. I secretly quite enjoy supermarket shopping.

11. Before getting Missy, I'd never owned a pet. Nope, not even a goldfish when I was a child.

12. I have too many disgusting habits to name, but probably the most unappealing is picking dry skin off my feet and then chewing it. I know, I disgust me too.

13. I've never been afraid of going to the dentist but, until a few years ago, I had a phobia of going to the hairdressers.

14. I've lived in three cities as an adult - Bradford, Manchester and Leicester - the latter for 20 years. I will leave one day... maybe?

15. Things internet people have recognised me by when meeting in real life: my fringe, my Feminist Killjoy bag, my tattoo, my red hair and, on one memorable occasion, by boobs.