I don't do doughnuts - and other revelations

I've never considered myself to be a maverick in any way whatsoever. I'm terribly conventional really. So it came as a bit of a surprise to realise that I have some quirks that do set me apart from a lot of 'normals.' For example:

• I cannot bear sand. I won't have it in my garden at home so the kids can't have a sandpit and when we go to the beach I spend all my time shaking sand off the beach towels and my feet. It's  not so bad when it's dry, but once my feet are wet I spend all the time trying to get the sand not to stick to me and - frankly - it's a miserable process. 

• Tea is my thing - I don't drink coffee. I used to, but I haven't for over ten years and now it's a distant memory. I did drink decaff for a while, but that seemed so entirely pointless I have given up on it altogether. People are often puzzled by this. 

• Although I have a daredevil streak in me I will never, ever do a bungee jump. It's as far from my idea of a good time as it's possible to get and I would throw myself out of a plane before I would do this. Bear in mind I am also not a big fan of flying so that's a big deal. 

• Nutella doesn't do anything for me. It has taken me most of my life to realise I just don't like that praline-y taste and that extends to all the pralines in any selection box of chocolates too. Now you know which ones to help yourself to if you share a box with me - or which ones to buy if you don't want me to eat any.

• When I was a kid I was terrified of car washes - those automated ones that you drive through - and when I was reminded of this by my mother as an adult it revived the fear. I now cannot drive through one of them without distraction or a sedative - I am being serious ! 

• I'm a big fan of fish, but I can't stand salmon. Smoked salmon is fine, but the other kind is just eugh ! This makes me sound really picky when I have to tell anyone my food preferences, but honestly I'm not. 

• I swim about 5-6 times a week, but I'm very frightened of large expanses of water. When the pool is empty it takes a few minutes before I stop being afraid that something (I don't know what) is going to happen to me in the water. I love swimming, so this one is a bit of an issue. 

• On a similar note, this becomes even more complicated by the fact that I get horribly seasick, but I will scuba dive. While I'm on the water I feel sick as anything, but when I'm in the water I am fine. Weird eh ? 

• Despite years of devoted service to cakes of all kinds I just don't like traditional doughnuts. Yes I can appreciate the smell of freshly made doughnuts, but the sugar coated variety are far from my idea of a treat. I was so scared of my mother as a child that I never told her that I didn't like them and when I confessed as an adult she was quite surprised. 

I'm sure there are plenty of other oddities about me, but these ones appear to be the ones that cause the most consternation to others. Oh well, it's part of my charm I guess :)

Keep taking the pills (the blue one or the red one ?)

I've said before that in my head movies are real. This is sometimes a bit odd as I think something has really happened and it's just a scene in a film I've watched. I'm not alone in this - a man I worked with used to tell stories as if they were real that were lifted from movies. eg. the friend of his who did the a job that sounded really familiar then I realised that was because it was the Edward Norton character in Fight Club - I didn't have the heart to tell my work colleague that he was delusional and we all knew, it seemed too unkind.

Then there are the 'facts' I know because it was in a movie so it must be true. The most disturbing fallout of my obsession with moving pictures, however, is how I perceive life events through the filter of screenwriting cliches. Well mostly romantic comedy cliches actually as those are the movies I tend to watch the most as they require very little thinking and even less active engagement with the plot. The reason I even mention this is that it has become a bit debilitating and I'm borderline agrophobic now for the following reasons:

1. I can't tell Hubbie I love him before he goes anywhere because if I do something terrible will happen to him minutes later while I'm washing up and smiling at nothing in particular (the same applies to anyone I love)

2. When I'm sitting in the car waiting at lights I'm convinced a runaway truck will pitch up out of nowhere and jacknife ploughing straight into unsuspecting me

3. A cough always means something sinister (usually consumption of course.) If it's dismissed as 'nothing just a little tickle in my throat' they're almost certainly a goner !

4. If I meet someone new I can't assume they are entirely trustworthy, they could be an assassin or a private investigator befriending me for nefarious purposes

5. Loud noises at night are always bad news. I once phoned a friend to come over to my flat rather than leave my bedroom to check what the loud noise had been hours earlier. I threw a set of front door keys out of my bedroom window to him in the street and he quietly and carefully climbed the stairs two floors up - so as not to disturb the intruders - armed with something heavy. He kindly gave me the all clear when he'd put the suitcase back up into the bathroom cupboard that it had fallen out of.

Can you imagine how tiring it is trying to unpick the cliches from the probable ? Now bear in mind I've picked the examples that show me in the least crazy light - no really I have ! If I was to go into the Bollywood movie cliches too you'd be all discombobulated. Then there's the whole 'what if the Matrix is real ?' thing when the Sky box goes off for no reason. I didn't say it had to make sense. 

So I'm going to bed now, with the stairs fully lit and not in a skimpy nightdress. 

Wish me luck !  

You have nothing to fear… except the things you're frightened of

I was scrolling through the BBC website and saw this article about China's Ghost projects  which include a theme park that was built and is now used to grow crops, a 'British Town' that is only used for wedding photo shoots and most disturbing (to me at least) a shopping mall with 1500 empty shops. This is the stuff of nightmares. Endless corridors of emptiness and the haunting echoes of masses of space with no purpose.

It disturbed me most because it made me feel very queasy and reminded me of my own irrational fear which I rarely share and am now making public. I have a phobia of empty swimming pools. When I posted this on Facebook a friend confessed to the same fear and suggested googling it. Then something odd happened. I have never felt the need to look into this fear before so I have no idea how common or otherwise it may be. I found out that it's not uncommon and that some sadist has put lots of images of empty swimming pools under the heading 'fear of empty swimming pools' which comes up about third in the search results.

A non-scary swimming pool

It's as though some wag is trying aversion therapy on the sly. I genuinely don't want to see images of swimming pools in a state of disrepair or with a small muddy puddle at the bottom of an otherwise drained space. I can't explain why it bothers me so much. I love swimming and an over-full pool bothers me far less. If there is a gap that suggests the pool is slightly under-full I do get a bit anxious. Again, I have no idea why.

I don't want my son to develop phobias so I try to get him to be braver than I ever was. I was a fearful child and it wasn't until I was an adult that I decided to face down some of those fears.

- When I visited my friend Fatima who was living in Toulouse we went a climbing wall as she had taken up climbing as a hobby. As I wrangled with footholds and handholds and negotiated belays and carabiners I didn't think about my fear of heights. From the top I had no choice, but to be ok about it, but I really did feel alright. It also meant that I was able to learn to ski as a fear of heights can be pretty debilitating otherwise.

- How I ended up sitting in a roller coaster at Chessington next to my friend Norm is anyone's guess, seeing as they are not my idea of a good time. As I tried to climb across him to get out he calmly explained that they go slower than I drive a car. Also the man who was eating his lunch sitting under it looked very relaxed about it so it probably wasn't going to kill us all. I can't say I'm an adrenaline junkie now, but at least I'm not completely terrified of them any more.

- It wasn't until my Mum reminded me that I had a toddler tantrum about getting back on a plane that I remembered my childhood fear of flying. I have Hubbie to thank for getting me past this by a) rationalising my fears for me and b) taking the mickey so mercilessly that I was distracted by laughter rather than waiting to plummet thousands of feet into the ocean.

- Another irrational one that my Mum reminded me about was automatic car washes. Apparently as a child I screamed my head off as my Dad drove the car through a car wash and had she not reminded me about it the memory would have remained buried where it belongs. Instead I used to invite people to sit and talk to me while the big rolling brushes threatened to crush us to death. Thankfully now Hubbie and my boy love to wash the car by hand, so I'm spared the trauma.

So, the biggies are dealt with. I'm pretty sure that a fear of empty swimming pools isn't going to have a detrimental effect on my life, but so long as I don't pass it on to my son I'm happy.