I’m mostly past this small crisis in “how can a travel blog exist when I can’t travel?!” and normal function is resuming. Actually, behind the scenes it’s already resumed. I found a pad of graph paper I’ve never used and it is rapidly being covered in plans and ideas and I’m scheduling stuff again.
But I thought I’d do a “get to know me!” post. I think I’ve done something like it once before but it was a while ago and no blog is complete without an off-topic get to know me post. I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious but there’s a person behind this blog, one person, and you may as well know who I am.
So, hi, I’m Juliet. For the avoidance of all doubt, that’s not the name on my passport or other official documents. I’m of the generation that had it absolutely hammered into us to never ever use our real names on the internet and although I’m very happy to put my real face out there, I like that little bit of distance that not having my legal name attached gives. If you’re that interested, Juliet is just a tiny variation on it. You’ll have it within three guesses, I haven’t used that much imagination and I don’t mind people knowing so much as I mind googling my real name leading here.
I was born on the south coast of England in 1985, the oldest of two sisters (obviously the second didn’t exist at that point). My dad’s family all come from London. My mum’s mum’s family are from various parts of the southern English countryside and my mum’s dad’s family are from East London. With 75% London blood flowing through me, I didn’t get quite as much of the West Country accent as was my birthright but I hear a farmer’s ooh-arr vowels escape my mouth occasionally. I swam, reasonably successfully, from about three months old and I did ballet, not at all successfully, between about four and ten. I’m so not a ballerina. Aged nine, I started to learn to play the clarinet, also pretty unsuccessfully but at about eight or nine I moved from the squeaky descant recorder to the treble and later to the tenor and I’m alright at them. I know, you hear “recorder”. They’re bigger, they’re deeper and I don’t squeak. I’ve done my time in a Baroque music group (I played the mute cornett. It’s a stick) and assorted school choirs, including a tiny sixth form madrigal choir.
I started French when I was eleven and Spanish when I was thirteen and I carried them on to GCSE and to A Level and then to degree. I’d always thought I’d study chemistry at uni because that’s what my dad did and that was as far as my imagination stretched when I was little. Chemistry turned out to have too much maths and physics, my other favourite science, turned out to have too much tickertape – that piece of coursework cost me the full A Level, I had to drop it at AS. So I carried on with my languages, which earned me a year studying abroad. I got a lot of travel and adventure out of that year but I also had French grammar at 8am every Monday. I’ve talked extensively about that. I’ve also talked a lot about my time with the caving club. I spent my uni years crawling around muddy holes in the ground trying to keep up with people 6ft+ who couldn’t understand why I couldn’t easily and comfortably reach things they could reach.
When I was little, I wanted to be a digger driver. Then I wanted to be an artist – I’ve never been able to draw or paint but what does a seven-year-old care about that? I think I’ve always wanted to write and now I have two blogs and a book with a second on the way. While I was doing my physics A Level I wanted to be an astronaut and then I wanted to be a bus driver because I went for a trial on a recruitment day and they said if I was 21 rather than 18 they’d have offered me a job there and then. I’ve since changed my mind, having seen some of the abuse bus drivers get even in this quiet rural part of the world.
I ended up working in an office, which is very few people’s childhood dream. I have two jobs, at two different companies doing different things but I sit at the same desk all week. I’m an admin assistant/general keeping-the-company-running-person at one and I’m a researcher & analyst at the other. Now there’s a pandemic on I’m furloughed from the first and I’m working from home at the second but I worked remotely anyway because that job’s based in London and I’m very much not. It gives me a steady income and a holiday allowance of 23 days which I stretched to 47 days away overseas last year – well, no, not all of it overseas. Those 47 days include two visits to the Edinburgh Fringe, which used to be most easily accessed by a Flybe flight, a short weekend in Canterbury and a short week in York and actually doesn’t include a weekend in Devon or a night in the Chilterns.
I’ve also been a volunteer at our local Tourist Information Centre (got a name badge and everything), a teaching assistant in a tiny rural primary school, the true power behind the Head of IT throne at the same primary school and I spent a couple of months as an accounts assistant that turned out be the accountant at a holiday letting & estate agent. And of course, I’ve been an assortment of Brownie, Guide & Ranger leaders for thirteen years now and that’s allowed me to be an archery instructor and fencing coach. Technically I was also employed as an outdoors activity instructor but I never actually did any instructing.
What about me as a person? I like to read, although I do tend to mostly read old children’s fiction – boarding school books, The Secret Garden, that sort of thing. I don’t watch much TV, although I’ve really enjoyed Killing Eve and I love Farscape and there are things about the newish Netflix series Ragnarok that I’ve enjoyed. I don’t really watch films either. The only things I’ve made the long drive to the nearest cinema for in the last five or ten years are the MCU movies and the Mission Impossible movies. I love the Mission Impossible series. I don’t listen to much music either. The only new music I’ve really picked up since I left school are Something Corporate, Jack’s Mannequin, Taylor Swift and Twin Atlantic. I’ll sometimes put Radio X on while I’m working but otherwise, music is mostly just something for the car. I know it’s a bit unusual but it’s just something I’m not all that interested in.
I’m naturally blonde (mousey at the top, golden at the ends, no bleach involved ever), feel more me with assorted shades of red and orange and am currently enjoying the freedom of lockdown to dye my hair blue (turned out green), hot pink (turned out magenta) and violet (not as bright purple as I’d hoped). If you’re nose-to-nose with me and know that you’re looking for it, you may notice that I have heterochromia iridium – that means my eyes are different colours. It’s not dramatic. One’s hazelly-green, one’s hazelly-blue. I’m the only person in my entire family who doesn’t have blue eyes and I’m struggling to think of anyone among my friends. I’ve worn glasses since I was about three after my parents discovered that I couldn’t see the nice boats floating out on the sea. I’m squeamish about the idea of laser surgery, besides the fact that it’s expensive and not guaranteed to work – and certainly not to make any difference to the long-sightedness that’s surely less than twenty years away. I’m also accustomed to my face with glasses on and I think I’d look weird without them.
Most of the rest of my life goes on this blog and what’s not here is going on my lifestyle/personal blog. I travel and write about it. I make scrapbooks and sometimes write about them. I go out and have small adventures and write about them. I go to Brownies and Rangers and if we do something exciting like go to winter camp or take my Brownies for their first ever residential, I write about it. I make spreadsheets and the next post you’ll see will be me explaining one of my spreadsheets – it’s on Russia costs and spending, in case anyone wants to know how much it costs to do things in Russia. And I go in the bath almost every evening where I either read a book, scroll Twitter or write more blog posts (I have a waterproof case so I can take my phone in the Blue Lagoon but it’s also really useful for baths).
And that’s me. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.