About Alice

For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to be “Alice.” Not my real name, but as I’m the kind of person that shit tends to follow, I’d prefer not to give it something easy to stick to.

I suppose I’ve led a less-than-ordinary life since my late teens. I’ve travelled a fair bit, and made some extraordinary life decisions – all of which have moulded me into rather idiosyncratic personality. An acquired taste, perhaps … a bit like Marmite.

After 25 years of various attempts to label me, the powers that be have finally settled on a main dish of Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (of the Borderline type) with a side-order of Cyclothymia, a lesser-known (probably because few celebrities admit to having it …. although Stephen Fry does) relative of the Bipolar family.

The diagnosis doesn’t surprise me, and it probably explains why my life has been one series of “interesting” adventures after another since I left home. However, I am the single mother of a son, and I believe my increasingly frequent erratic behaviour may have had a profound effect on him; and for that reason only, I have agreed to address it as a problem (rather than an eccentricity) and proceed with treatment to rein me back in.

I am a woman in my late forties, I have a son and a dog, and we live in a leafier area of England. I have always worked since leaving home at the age of 18, so I guess that has made me a functioning, eccentric, emotionally unstable sufferer  patient  victim  pretty decent Person.

Things that make me HAPPY:

Cuddling my son; snowdrops; ham and pea soup; fluffy slippers; mud puddles; double rainbows; Jelly Bellys (with exceptions); the colour green; birdsong; malapropisms; Have I got News for You; walking in the countryside; laughing gas; QI; crazy Daisy the manic mongrel; large portions; the word “globular”: Poundland; winning on EBay; arty crafty stuff; My Parents are Aliens; trifle; dancing in my underwear when no one’s looking; rollmops; Michael MacIntyre; sleeping; wellies; and wine gums.

Things that make me SAD:

War, famine, disease, poverty, and injustice; espresso flavoured Jelly Bellys (what’s that about?); gossip; chaos; anything that costs more than a fiver; cigarette smoke; rice cakes; burst water pipes; perfect people; shopping malls; repeating myself; kiddy hissy fits; America’s Funniest Home Videos; repeating myself; fine dining; high heels; white trousers; unexpected jalapeno peppers; MOTs; unmarked police cars; being outbid on EBay; stubbing my toe; itchy blankets; txt spk (h8 it! h8 it! h8 it!); paper cuts; and losing my car keys.

I also like photography, which is probably not the best choice for someone who has occasional urges to indulge in crippling spending sprees. But, pertinent to this blog site, it was during one of these very urges, that I left work for lunch and returned with £900 + worth of camera equipment including a macro lens. Well! What a fascinating world there is beyond the naked eye!  Actually, that’s not quite true, because the things I capture through the macro lens can be seen by the naked eye …. we just tend not to look that closely.

This blog is an attempt to explore my own little part of Wonderland, as if through a macro lens, and see if anything comes to light that had never been looked at that closely before.

Welcome to my world …