So I was tagged by Pippa and asked to tell you 10 things about me. This meme comes around every so often and on my first ever post on this blog, I shared the news that I once dated someone with four nipples. I don’t think I left myself anywhere to go after that high point of revelation, frankly.
Since I was a rule-breaker even as a small child (see below) I thought I’d change the meme slightly and share with you 10 memorable firsts that I haven’t shared here before.
Here goes:
First Teacher: Miss Tickle, a lovely woman unless you were aged 4-7, in which case she was terrifying. I remember having to stand in front of the whole school while she shouted, “Sally Havill, we do NOT climb on the school roof!” spanking me with every syllable. I also remember thinking, “It's not MY fault the drainpipes are so easy to climb.”
First snog: Trevor, a close family friend and classmate. When we were seven, I told him if he didn’t wait for me after school and kiss me, I’d beat him up. We drifted apart a bit after that.
First record: Howard Jones, Like to Get to Know You Well. I used to think spiked hair was the height of cool. This means the photos from my Mum’s second wedding are especially fun to look at, with me sporting my favourite Benetton cords and a Howard-inspired haircut.
First job: When I was 12, I went into town with a friend and knocked on dozens of hotel doors until we chanced upon a hotel that hired us as waitresses. I earned £1.50 an hour and on my first day, I tipped two people’s meals into their laps. I was swiftly moved to housekeeping.
First crush: G, a sailing coach at summer camp. After he rescued me from a slight mishap during an orienteering expedition where I learned a) I can’t speak French, b) I can’t read a map and c) hypothermia develops surprisingly quickly, G became my official first crush. I’m TOTALLY not putting his full name here, though, as he went on to be a bit famous. Learned that lesson the hard way, didn’t I?
First hangover: When I was 14, my Mum dropped me off at a friend’s birthday party with a six pack of alcohol free beer, having drilled into me that drinking just to fit in with your friends was NOT cool. Obviously, the moment she’d gone, I drank an entire bottle of Bacardi in the space of three hours and promptly threw up – a weird, neon yellow colour that’s still stuck in my mind 20 years later. I’ve never drunk Bacardi again, either.
First gig: Deacon Blue. I’m not proud of that.
First flat: A ramshackle ground floor flat in a huge Victorian property in Brighton. It had a 25 foot lounge with floor to ceiling windows. It also had mustard yellow carpets, condemned wiring and not a single drawer in the kitchen. Loved it.
First byline: As a student, I ran a magazine called Fresher Look, which basically meant me and my friends ‘reviewed’ all the bars we could find, wrote up our findings, and sold the resulting magazine to the university to put in the new students’ welcome packs each September. We won an award from the Financial Times, and everything. I’d like to say this was an early example of my entrepreneurial skills, but sadly, we failed to turn a profit in any of the three years we published it. Hic.
First blog: My first blog post was a rant about PR people. It was April 2006, and I’d just had an article published in a magazine for PRs which had been illustrated by a picture of a man wearing bunny ears. My not-at-all-provocative article humorously compared PR executives to small, fluffy creatures with nothing substantial between their ears – which must be why they kept pitching me clients that had no relevance to anything I wrote about. As you can imagine, it went down brilliantly. Cough.
After a few more years of blogging about media, I got mixed up with the Mummy bloggers and settled here at Who’s the Mummy. Where I now write BRILLIANT posts about how annoying it is when PR people pitch you clients that aren’t relevant to what you write about. At least I’m consistent, eh?
I'd now like to select some more volunteers to share their memorable firsts with me. Now this isn't one of those memes where I want you to shate cute kid stories – I've chosen people who I'm confident have some fantastically interesting memories to share – ladies, please do pop back and let me know if you've taken part – New Mum Online, Transatlantic Blonde, Soft Thistle and Babylon Lane Tales.
