Joanne Tinley Jewellery: You're It...

It seems that I've been tagged 3 times (by Lesley, Alison and Tina) by the "Seven Random Things" game that's been doing the rounds on blogs recently. Now, coming up with random facts isn't going to be hard, but trying to come up with seven people to tag is going to be a tricky one as the people I first thought of have all been tagged already!

So, the easy bit first,

When I was pregnant with B I had two cravings - fajitas (one of the few things that overpowered the horrible metallic taste I had in my mouth for much of my pregnancy) and a chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate ice cream from the co-op. T was on standing orders to buy a couple of tubs of the ice cream whenever he saw it as it wasn't in the shop very often!

As any visitor to our house will know, we have a few cows in the house - the picture below shows a couple of the ones that I allow in the kitchen. Picture frames full of postcards, crockery, the ironing board cover etc etc. Children of friends like to try and count them but soon give up after the first 100 - no, I'm not joking. It started when T and a friend started swapping postcards as a joke, and then all our family and friends got involved. It really started getting out of hand when people started giving them to me as well. There is now a strict policy on cow-giving and I try to keep most of them in just one part of the house!

Two of my 3 Grandads are buried in the same church yard. Yes, 2 of 3. My Dad's Mum remarried a couple of years after my Grandad died before I was born. Not only are both my Dad's Dad and step-Dad buried in the same church yard, but they shared the same birthday, died of the same thing and (obviously) married the same woman - and before you start getting strange ideas about my lovely nearly 91 year old Grandma, yes they did die of natural causes!

We used to have a valium-taking, vegetarian, epileptic dog. He developed epilepsy when he was about 2 and I was in the house on my own when he had his first fit, right under the hot iron sitting on the ironing board. I was jumping up and down screaming at him to stop as I was so scared - poor animal! We had to give him valium after a fit and we told that a vegetarian diet might help.

Talking of valium, my aforementioned lovely sweet nearly 91 year old Grandma offered me one before my driving test to calm my nerves. She said that it had worked for her!

I resat my A-levels. I passed them the first time round but not nearly the grades I was expected to get or needed for the uni course I wanted. My mum blamed moving house three times during 6th form and both my Grandads (Mum's mum and Dad's step-dad) dying the winter before the exams. Spending too much time with my first boyfriend might also have had something to do with it! Anyway, I'm glad that I did have to resit. It made me a better teacher as I'd never done badly at anything academic before so it definitely made me more understanding. And I never would have met T if I hadn't resat as I would otherwise have gone to a different uni and not gone into teaching. Which brings me to....

T and I met while we were teaching. I remember him clearly from my interview. Spending time together on Duke of Edinburgh award weekends and A level geography field trips was a strange courtship, but it obviously worked as we've been together for 11 years now!

Right, now for the difficult bit! I think that instead of tagging I'm going to list the people who I would have tagged if they hadn't had been tagged already and the three who tagged me - go and read their blogs and see what they've been up to!