Well, I’m a bit crap at this style sheet the moment, and after the comment on an about page, I thought in lieu of a proper bit of web designing (probably on my week off), I’d add an entry for non-friends.

This website started as a bit of a joke really. For my birthday a few years ago, my bloke bought me the domain name and slapped a load of birthday messages on it for me Then I had to think of something to do with it for the period he had bought it for. So I just did a bit of a silly blog with some ‘I like …’ and the like stuff in it. Then I got fed up and kind of stopped. Bad me. But when I rediscovered knitting (after about a 14 year break or so), I realised that knitty blogs were at the very least quite handy for reference purposes on patterns in books. Blogs are the best way to find out about problems with patterns and yarn, and where nice freebie patterns on the web are. And here we are.

So to actually talk about me is a bit odd for me. I feel weird thinking about it, but here we go I’m currently 27 (born in 1977), and live in the UK in a northern town (I could make several Smiths/Morrissey quotes here, but I won’t). As the name of the site might suggest, I work in a library – I’m not a shusher, but I do ask people to move to quiet discussion areas I’m currently studying for an information and library masters degree (and not far off starting my dissertation for it) in order to try and get past the basic customer service level of working and progress to the more academic services side. There is nothing wrong with customer services stuff, but I’m looking for something a bit more individual orientated. I love helping people with their research without having to do their project myself, which sound really stupid, but those who work in this kind of field will appreciate what I mean…

Outside of work, I like lots of artsy type stuff – I love reading quite a broad range of authors (well you’d hope so in my work). They range from the boringly obvious (yes I like Harry Potter), to the popular interesting and intelligent (writers like Amy Tan and Gail Anderson Dargatz, Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter, Banana Yoshimoto etc and Salman Rushdie to get a bloke in there too), to the popular obscure if that makes sense (Haruki Murakami, Gabriel Garcia Marquez). There are too many to mention, but I don’t always go for author as much as I do for the subject matter. You get the idea though.

I love music of all kinds too. The only stuff I don’t like is really heavy stuff (metal and dance that is), or really fluffy pop (Steps were evil, but Girls Aloud are ok). Jazz and classical are good, but so is listening to Franz Ferdinand, Nouvelle Vague, early Sleeper, Stereolab and that stuff. The latter bits are my fave kind of music.

Films are good. That’s all I should say really. Our dvd collection is about 600 strong at the moment, not counting the collection of videos that we are slowly replacing (they currently live in the loft slowly getting damp and potentially being chewed by the occassionally visiting rats – we live near woods and on the back of a field, so anyone in the same spot will tell you that rats are a part of that). Again, I like lots of genres, but if I want something easy to watch I would rather watch ‘How to Marry a Millionaire’, something by Pixar or some Woody Allen than something like ‘Meet the Fockers’. For something a bit more high brow, I like Three Colours, Japanese films (particularly those a bit more shocking or adventurous like Battle Royale and Audition), and a really broad range that would take months to write up about.

I like lots of things I try to run, but keep failing miserably over winter and starting again when the light comes back in the evening. This means I never improve. But at least I do something sometimes! I am an extremely recreational guitar strummer. I like the Mr Men and Ranma and making stuff. Cats are good things in the world, if only because they pretend to be much more clever than they are. When they do stupid stuff they pretend they haven’t. Look Around You is ace, but not as ace this series as in the first one. Cheese is yummy, but not blue cheese. Big comfy fluffy socks and a blanket with the fire on and a glass of wine, a film and my knitting is my idea of fab-ness, only made better by having my bloke by my side.

I think that is enough now

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Sarah, who lived in a land of water and beer. Sarah loved musicals, and one of her favourites was The Sound of Music. She dreamed of one day performing all the best songs, and the others too while watching the film at the theatre. One day, she had the opportunity to take part in a sing-a-long, so she leapt at the chance. She even managed to blag a spot on the local news.

But her evil friends knew of her joy, and decided to record the event for all to see. They made several screen captures, and used them to torture her and amuse her other friends.

Click here to see the pics on one page – Sarah is the brown paper package at the front on the right Sing-a-longa-Sarah!

Oh, incidentally, I have started on Fern from Rowan 36. Yummy Too busy at work to want to do much else though