Five More Things Meme

Cooksister tagged me for this meme ages ago, but a rigorous regime of cooking, baking, power cuts, and birthday preparations have kept me from my computer for the last few days. I'll write a full report of the first grown-up dinner party that I've cooked in living memory, soon.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

We were living in our photographic studios in London, running them as hire studios, old warehouses enmeshed in a triangle of train tracks, with a mezzanine for a bedroom and lots of white studio space everywhere else, but no windows to look out of. We were just about to get pregnant with our first child, and rushing over to South Africa as my father-in-law was dying. I was still working on a few walking holidays in Italy each year, the last one to be in September, when having just found out I was pregnant, I was suffering from being 'off food' and so the joys of a gourmet trip in Tuscany were lost to me.

Five snacks you enjoy:

Toast and marmalade
Vegetable crisps
South African rusks
Raisins
Chocolate

Five songs you know all the lyrics to:

Away in a Manger
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
Green grow the rushes O
Summer Loving - Grease
I got friends in low places - Garth Brooks

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
(I hope this is in pounds, rather than rand, otherwise one million won't cover it!)

Pay off the mortgages of all the immediate family.
Hire a school bus for the high school kids, that I give lifts to, who hitch 25km to school every day.
Visit all my friends and family on a leisurely, luxurious, world tour.
Eat out in all the wonderful restaurants I've been reading about in all your blogs.
Provide some of the buildings that my children's school needs so badly.

Five bad habits:

Procrastination
Escapism
Untidiness
Waiting till the petrol gauge is on red before filling up.
Leaving receipts in my purse till it reaches exploding point

Five things you like doing:

Reading in front of the fire.
Eating good food not cooked by me.
Looking at a distant view.
Baking.
Filling the house with friends and food.

Five things you would never wear again:

Silver lipstick, which gave an unhealthy pallor to the skin though I'm still quite tempted by the silver nail polish that I wore with it.
Stilettos - my feet can't take anything other than comfortable shoes these days.
School uniform - any uniform.
Blouses with ruffles, ruffs and metallic gold thread stripes down them.
Miniskirts, though I'm in complete denial about this as I still have about four of my favourite Jigsaw mini skirts from the early Nineties in a suitcase upstairs.

Five favourite toys:

My Canon digital camera.
My blog.
Secateurs - pruning is my best bit of gardening and the only thing I do consistently.
Astrology books - western and Chinese, I find it all intriguing.
Crystals - from trips to the Scratch Patch with the kids, that sit in my pocket, smooth and polished for my fingers to turn over - right now it's a gorgeous piece of blue lace agate with delicate lacy stripes.