All About Me

Well hello there and welcome to my blog.  Have a seat, get comfortable and make yourself at home.  Hopefully this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship…

Let me tell you a bit about myself…

I am a Scottish (wah-hey!) woman, living in Edinburgh.  I’m really lucky to live in such a wonderful city and am sure I would have found my way here eventually, even if I hadn’t been born here.  I spent a brief period in my early twenties living and working abroad but having met the love of my life at a much earlier age than expected, I just couldn’t stay away from him and ended up returning to Edinburgh where we set up home together and eventually married in 2007. 

Blogging has been on my mind for a while.  In truth I’ve always harboured fantasies about having regular newspaper or magazine column – you know, those women that get paid for writing about their lives, loves and opinions on the world each week.  Given that I never pursued my dream of becoming either a travel writer or a food critic, I think it’s safe to say that neither the Guardian nor even the Scotsman is going to come knocking on my door for hilarious anecdotes or worldly views any time soon.  So blogging it is then!  But what to blog about?  There are a lot of experts out there in cyberspace who tell me that a blog must have a theme and should stick to one subject only.  Food blogs should be about food only, travel blogs likewise… What to choose? Who am I?  What do I do?

Food!  I love cooking and love eating even more.  I love watching cookery programmes, reading cookery books and in the spirit of the most passionate Masterchef contestant, I think about food constantly; always considering ingredients and recipes and I just love feeding friends and family and seeing that look on their face when I know I have hit a flavour combination just right!  I don’t want to just talk about food though.  Aside from anything else, I’ve usually halfway through dinner before I remember that I meant to take a photo of the impressive looking dish.  Plus, there are so many great food blogs out there.  Can I really compete with the likes of the wonderful Kavey Eats or Bon Apetit?

Travel!  I love going places and experiencing new things.  Well, going places and eating new things mainly…  Problem is, I haven’t travelled particularly extensively despite an ever growing must-go list.  We live on a bit of a budget; both get limited holidays from work and the clincher – my parents retired abroad.  Great decision for them.  Means that my choice of holiday destination is now somewhat limited though. 

I’m a film geek!  That’s right.  I’m not ashamed to admit it.  I love film and hubby and I are regularly greeted by staff at the local cinema as if we are old friends.  Yep, if the cinema were a bar in Boston, we would be Norm.  I love most films apart from really scary ones and rom coms.  Unfortunately this makes me somewhat of a pariah amongst fellow female friends.  Knowing how many films I watch, they are constantly trying to get my opinion on the latest Katherine Heigl/Matthew MCaughney/Kate Hudson love fest with the fabulous shoes and oh so cute ickle baby…  They don’t understand when I would rather talk about Almodovar’s vintage work or the sheer awesomeness of the latest comic book adaptation/Frank Miller effort etc.  So could I use my blog to review films?  Well, I may certainly enthuse about a movie I have loved but it’s a rather restrictive topic really, and I don’t want to turn my cinema trips into a chore by feeling that I have to blog after each and every film.

What about books?  I read a lot but not always new titles so not sure if there is an audience out there.  Also, I am already in a bookgroup so have space to share opinions on most of my reading material.

Music is good.  It makes, so a wise woman once said, the people come together.  Personally I listen to anything from hard rock to jazz with a bit of classical thrown in.  My tastes are eclectic and I love discovering new bands.  Can’t really see a blog being shaped around all this though…

Families feature heavily in a lot of blogs.  Personally OH and I are child free.  This is a conscious decision and contrary to popular belief, not one that was taken lightly.  A great deal of the thoughts swirling around my head on any given day tend to revolve around this issue and it is one I am constantly being asked to defend.  Yes, the childfree stance on life may be a regular feature of my blog but I don’t want to restrict my writings to just that.  There are already great blogs out there on this topic, such as Childfree Me and I don’t necessarily want to reinvent the wheel.  Neither do I want to set this out as the very essence of my being and the most interesting thing about me.  Above all I don’t want to attract haters.  I know you can’t please all the people all of the time but I feel us childfree women (never the men) attract a lot of bad press by those who don’t understand our views and I want this blog to be, well, a nicer place than that!

Life is an ongoing struggle.  OH and I live on a tight budget.  We would like nothing better than to move to a bigger, nicer house or even have the money to make our little flat look and feel a bit more homely but with ever rising prices, we are finding things tough.  It certainly doesn’t allow us to travel to the places we want to see or even be able to feast on the food we would like but we are doing our best to get by with the hand which we have been dealt.  Living on a budget could be a good blog theme – it would certainly encompass all the above aspects of our daily life – what we eat, how we travel frugally etc but then, that just brings me back to talking about general life with a bit of all the above elements thrown in from time to time.  Yes, a bit like those magazine columnists really! 

So I guess I’m going to be telling you more about my life and habitual musings.

So, now you have gotten to know a bit about me, I hope you will continue to read and interact with my rambling streams of thought.  Perhaps you will recognise bits of your own life, thirty-something or not. 

Welcome to the world of blog!