New interview meme

[sally_maria]

Because I'm naturally nosy.

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate! (but not that intimate ;-D)
3. You will update your lj with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.


suekay_87 asked me

1.What other sci fi shows do you love?
Doctor Who, Firefly, Star Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9), Babylon 5.

2. How long have you been going online?
Since 1998 - pay by the minute dial-up.

3. What's your favourite food?
Sweets? Plain chocolate. Real food? Roast beef.

4. Who's the most famous person you've ever met?
Er.. it depends on the value of famous. Jenny from Atomic Kitten, Dickie Bird the cricket umpire, Alan Titchmarsh or Terry Pratchett. We have signing sessions at work with these people, so I often wind up saying hello, at least - Terry Pratchett, I queued for an hour to get an autograph from.

5. Money aside, what would be your dream job and why?
I really enjoy training - teaching adults who are interested in learning, as opposed to the lion taming which school teaching so often seems to be. And I enjoy doing things with computers, so maybe training relating to that. (As opposed to my current job, where I train people to use tills, which may run on top of Windows but don't really do anything exciting.)

wellinghall asked me:

1. Have you lived anywhere apart from your current home town?
I was born here, but I lived in Portsmouth for three years or so when I was doing my degree. (Economic History, for a bonus point. :-D)

2. How did you first encounter Tolkien?
I have very vague memories of an LP of readings from the Hobbit or LotR, when I was at infant school. My first real encounter was with LotR when I was nine or so and read it from the school library. I got bogged down in the Dead Marshes at the end of term when I had to give the book back, and didn't come back to it for a year or so. (The same thing happened to me a year or so later with the Silmarillion, I got stuck in the middle of Turin - I think I was 13 when I finished it.)

3. How did you first encounter the Tolkien Society?
My Dad worked with a guy called Rick Crosby, back when I was a teenager, and he mentioned that there was such a thing - but I never got up the nerve to contact them. Then back in 1996 I was reading SFX and there was a mention that you could get the 1992 Proceedings cheap if you joined for a year. I thought, why not, and wrote to Salesman - who sent me a very nice reply. Within six months I was volunteering to be Librarian (all those extra books to read) and my downfall was complete.

4. What do you enjoy most about your work?
Using what I know to help people find what they want - whether it's the right invitations for their wedding or just the right pen refill.

5. How did you encounter Live Journal?
I joined Live Journal pretty much just to follow a WIP (Work in Progress - a long fanfic being posted in parts), it was the easiest way to make sure I didn't miss a part. It wasn't until I met elanor_isolda that I really started using it to interact with people and actually posting myself.

alitalf asked me

1. Apart from Tolkien, what book(s) / writer(s) have had the greatest influence on you?
That's a really difficult question - so many to choose from. Maybe Rosemary Sutcliffe, for inspiring my love of history, and Terrance Dicks, for my love of sci-fi - Doctor Who has a lot to answer for. :-)

2. What is your favourite; type of music / band / singer?
I like a really wide range of music, but most often with female voices. My favourites at the moment include Nightwish, Sarah McLachlan, Loreena McKennitt and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

3. What kind of things do you like to do on holiday?
Visiting places of interest (mostly historic). I don't mind sitting on a beach for a couple of hours - provided I have a book - but I couldn't imagine spending a whole holiday doing it.

4. Who is your favourite Tolkien character?
Eowyn. As a young reader I admired her heroism, but as I've grew older I came to appreciate her as a more complex character, who learns and grows in the course of her story. I also have a strong soft spot for Faramir.

5. What is your favourite drink?
White wine, probably, though I enjoy cider on a hot day, provided it's not too sweet. Oh, and coffee, which I drink a lot more of than any alcoholic drink.

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Okay then - "interview me".

[sally_maria]

1. How did you first find out about the TS?
2. What's your favourite drink (alcoholic or not)?
3. Do you have a favourite Tolkien character?
4. How did you become an actuary?
5. What's your most important unfulfilled ambition?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

1. I wrote to Christopher Tolkien, c/o Allen & Unwin, with some questions about Glofindel and the tengwar. They passed my letter onto the then secretary of the TS, and I joined. This would have been in early 1983. However, I think one or two of my friends were in the TS a year or so before this.

2. A light dry bitter - but it varies by circumstance, and eg a draught of cool fresh water, at the right time, is better than anything!

3. Faramir. Beorhtnoth.

4. After two years of a maths degree, I was scouting round for something to do with it, but not by becoming a teacher or an accountant. The university careers office suggested talking to an actuary in the town who was a Higher Education Liaison Officer.

5. To play cricket at a senior level - England would do, but Leicestershire would be nice! Sending down a nicely-flighted leg-break ...

[sally_maria]

Oh and thanks for playing. :-)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

No problem!

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Well then, "Do me! Do me!" seems a pertinent phrase ...

[sally_maria]

Are we lowering the tone again? :-)

1. What's your favourite band/singer?
2. How many Oxonmoots have you been to?
3. Who first introduced you to LJ?
4. Do you have a favourite period of history?
5. Have you ever had a pet?

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I don't know what you mean ...

1. Hmm, that's a tough one, I have a broad taste in music (right now Elastica's "Line Up" is on, before that Moby). In my late teens it was Ultravox, in my 20s Marillion, and since then kd Lang, Suzanne Vega, Manic St Preachers, Sisters of Mercy, Vivaldi, All About Eve, The Hamsters, and Prokofiev have all featured regularly on my stereo.

2. 1983, 1990-2006 = 18.

3. Hmm, probably na_lon given that she was reading and then I started catching up with old friends and joined up too.

4. No. Well in the sense of "I have lots of books and a keen interest" I have a wide-ranging 'catholic' taste, so no one period stands out. In the sense of "Would I like to live then" then I like it here thangyavermuch.

5. I had a Flemish Giant rabbit, as a 10 year old, called Titch - and he had a mean bite and was distinctly unfriendly, but he was mine. My family also had a Basset Hound "Pepsi". Actually her pedigree name was Duchess Jasmine, but the previous owner felt a tool shouting that out of his back door at night; we had her from them as they took on the running of a pub on a busy 'A' road and she had no traffic sense. If she got bored she'd waddle into the central reservation, snuffle about a lot an watch the cars go by, before trying to cross back in front of a lorry. She loved us, and we loved her, I remember her leaping into the car and climbing over the seat when we came back from a week in Cornwall. She was a great laugh coming downstairs as all the loose skin would fall around her face making her look bizarrely aged. I like bassets a lot.

[sally_maria]

Thank you - your dog sounds like she was a lot of fun.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Interview me, why not? We probably don't know each other as well as we might.

[sally_maria]

1. How and when did you first find out about the TS?
2. What's your favourite drink?
3. Have you always had cats? (I understand that owned is the wrong term :-D)
4. Do you have a favourite Tolkien character?
5. Who is your favourite author, apart from Tolkien?

Prolix answers

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

1. How and when did you first find out about the TS?

It was Hibernia the Balrog who first introduced me to The Lord of the Rings and to the TS. We met at university, when I was studying electrical engineering and she was studying English (and was a member of Hobbitsoc as well as the TS). She eventually persuaded me to start reading LotR. I started one evening and later realised it was time to go to a maths lecture the next morning. After we were married she introduced me to people she knew on the TS, perhaps via Northfarthing Innmoot or perhaps by hosting a smial at our house in Ilford. Either way, I came to find more and closer friends via the TS than from anywhere else in my life.

2. What's your favourite drink?

On an immediate basis that can depend on the weather, what I have been doing, and what I may be eating. However, if it was a kind of "Desert island drinks" choice I would probably choose to keep red wine. Otherwise the immediate preference can be; good English beer with character, for example some of the Wychwood brews, a continental lager-style beer, or a wheat beer, served cool in summer (not the fluid often sold as lager in UK pubs), maybe a glass of something crisp and white like Pinot Grigio if we are eating salad in the summer, or very occasionally late at night a fine malt whisky, such as an Islay.

3. Have you always had cats? (I understand that owned is the wrong term :-D)

No, I was always a dog person and had a dog just large enough not to be small and yappy when I was at school. The Boss, whose home background included a tribe of cats, got me to agree soon after we got a house that if she happened across a cat that needed a good home and was otherwise unloved we would not turn it away. I agreed, and some months later, perhaps as long as a year, a colleague at her place of work told her of a stray cat she fed but could not keep in her flat. Hibernia took a wicker cat basket to London and brought the cat back in the basket on the train. When the basket was opened, the cat got out, saw someone sitting down, and got on their lap. That was Goldie, a deaf white cat who we took to Innmoot on at least one occasion. The three cats we have got through random chance have been white.

4. Do you have a favourite Tolkien character?

Well, I'd like to be Gandalf for much of the time, the wisdom and knowing more about how the universe works is a great attraction, though the bits of fighting and heroism might send me catatonic. It would be good to meet Galadriel because she might be willing and able to help me think more clearly and understand life, the universe and everything from a slightly broader perspective. I most admire Frodo for meeting difficult challenges from a standing start and doing it better than anyone had a right to expect.

5. Who is your favourite author, apart from Tolkien?

That would have to be Terry Pratchett, evidenced by the fact that his books are the only ones we always buy in hardcover before they are available as paperbacks. OTOH there are others who are close to the top of my list. In no particular order, Vernor Vinge, John Varley, Peter Hamilton, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Moon, Selina Rosen, Justina Robson, Robert Sawyer, Lois McMaster Bujold, Tom Holt, JK Rowling, and some whose names will occur to me later.

Re: Prolix answers

[sally_maria]

I'm glad not the only one who couldn't give short answers.

I seem to remember drinking malt whiskey late at night at your house on one occasion - something to do with PAT testing sound equipment, I think.

Re: Prolix answers

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

I don't recall the occasion at present, but a memory may emerge. I claim that longer answers are in the spirit of the game becasue they can give a fuller and more informative response than a one-liner. Of course, the perfect one-liner might say it all, but how many of us are such brilliant language users as that?

Re: Prolix answers

[sally_maria]

Certainly not me - though I think it does depend on the question, some demand much more detailed answers than others.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Um, if it's not too late to play, interview me, please!

[sally_maria]

No, not at all - this one made a slow start but has been really interesting.

We'll start with the traditional one
1. How did you find out about the TS?
2. What's your favourite food?
3. Do you have a favourite author, apart from Tolkien?
4. Have you always lived in the UK?
5. Do you have a favourite band/singer (apart from skordh ;-D)?

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

1. Through Taruithorn. I think kargicq in particular alerted me to the fact that there was a national society, when he said that he met his then girlfriend there ;-) Then one September various Taru people, including Kargicq, Neuromancer, Skordh, probably Foradan and others, were going to Oxonmoot, and I was in Oxford anyway, so I went along and signed up on the Friay night. Which is why my first Oxonmoot badge is hand-written ;-)

2. Ugh. Not really wanting to think about food of any kind right now. But I do have a very sweet tooth, so sweets and chocolate are usually high up there, especially marzipan, and peppermint creams. I am also very fond of pancakes with lemon and sugar, and hope to get round to a belated pancake day sometime soon! Of non-sweet things, I really like pasta with a creamy sauce, smoked salmon and parmesan. Yum.

3. I don't think I could narrow it down to *a* favourite author, no. Authors I am very fond of include (but doubtless I'm missing loads): D.L. Sayers, George MacDonald, Diana Wynne Jones, Baroness Orczy, D.K. Broster, Diane Duane, Alison Uttley. Yes, a pretty eclectic collection ;-)

4. Yes. Indeed I find the thought of living anywhere else, especially somewhere where English is not the first language, pretty scary. Friends of mine lived in Germany for a few years, and I think they did find it quite tough. It was lovely to visit Kargicq and Neuromancer in the States, but again, I wouldn't want to do it myself, especially with a baby. Thinking about it, the worst thing would be being so far away from friends and family, especially my parents (who for instance have been brilliant in coming here now to look after El while I'm sick).

5. As with books, my musical tastes are quite eclectic (though I think in both cases there is a huge gap in what might be called 'modern, popular'). I am rather partial to Steeleye Span, though.

[sally_maria]

Thank you, and I hope you're feeling a little better today.

I'd find it hard to narrow my tastes down to a favourite author as well, and my list would have a lot of overlap with yours, though I hadn't heard of D.K. Broster. *goes off to google*

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

My favouritest-ever English teacher gave me 'The Flight of the Heron' when I was 13 or so, and I'd certainly recommend it. Jacobites! Hurt/comfort! Duels! Friendship beyond all reason! She wrote a couple of sequels to it as well, and some other stuff, but goodness knows if anything is still in print.

In a spirit of reciprocation, who (else) would be among your list of favourite authors?

I *hope* I am finally beginning to feel a little better (but I thought that before then had a relapse; this bug is nasty!) Thank you!

And lovely icon ;-)

[sally_maria]

Some more of my favourite authors include old friends like Georgette Heyer and Ellis Peters, whose books I've loved since I was a teenager. Then, while I was a student I met Elizabeth Peters and her Victorian Egyptologist, Amelia Peabody.

Much more recently I've greatly enjoyed Garth Nix and his Young Adult fantasy novels, and Lois McMaster Bujold, who was introduced to me by rustica and wellinghall.

Thanks for the nice remarks about the icon - yours are pretty adorable as well. :-)