Carol recently tagged me to divulge 7 random facts about myself....

THE RULES:
1. Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post THE RULES on your blog.
3. Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.
4. Tag 7 people and link to them.
5. Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

I've pondered this and can really only half-comply...since I don't know seven other people with blogs, and even the handful I know have probably already been tagged, so let's just say if you wanna be tagged by me, leave a link in a comment and consider yourself tagged lol!

So here are my seven facts, and some are a little weird so don't say you weren't warned...

• My first computer was a Commodore 64, which I programmed to play tic-tac-toe and respond with dialogue akin to WOPR in the movie War Games....it seemed really neat at the time.

• My first kiss was with a boy I met in a psychiatric ward....I was 17 and he was 19. He was admitted after he put his fists through a window in an attempt to slit his wrists after being told that his ex-girlfriend had been pregnant with his child but had an abortion...all of which later turned out to be untrue. I was there because I had (and still have) a dog phobia which nearly caused a complete breakdown. We spent most nights sneaking into the kitchen of the ward late at night to make coffee and exchange tales of woe. We only met once briefly after we were discharged (since he didn't live in Dublin), and before he left, he kissed me and told me I was beautiful...which I think was kind of a turning point for me.

• I spent two years in drama-school on a part-time basis and one day, following a series of videoed screen-test exercises, was told by my drama-teacher in a very grudging fashion that the camera loved me...think the rest of the class hated me after that lol!

• At around that time, I applied to work as an assistant dogsbody for a touring company called Renaissance Shakespeare, started and run by no other than Kenneth Brannagh, and was utterly shocked and thrilled when I had a handwritten reply from him urging me to keep up my studies and reapply to the company as a jobbing actor when I'd finished. Sometimes wish I had!

• I worked in retail for nearly ten years and for a short spell had the pleasure of counting Brian Dennehy amongst my regular customers, while he was appearing in the Iceman Cometh in Dublin. The first time I saw him, he allowed himself to be elbowed out of his place in a queue by an aggressive little grannie and smiled at me over her head in amusement, and I was always impressed by how genuinely pleasant, gentle, soft-spoken, good-humoured and polite he was, a real gent (such a rarity in Dublin even in those days!).

• I type in my sleep...no kidding! When I quit retail, I retrained to acquire some office skills including typing. Due to the intensive nature of the course we were encouraged to 'type' as often as we could i.e. to move your fingers as if typing while doing other things....so I would 'type' shop names and billboard ads while on the bus for example...this habit became so ingrained that I still do it...apparently even in my sleep...I just wish I could find out what it is I'm typing when I'm asleep lol!

• My earliest childhood memory is of a particularly vivid recurring dream in which I was weeping against a man's shoulder, and while I could not see his face, I could feel the texture of his jacket and smell his aftershave, and I knew he loved me and would keep me safe. The dream continued with decreasing frequency into my twenties. But the experience in the dream actually happened some months after I met my other half, and that was the moment I knew we were meant to be together...and I've never told him.

Well that's probably more info than you ever expected or wanted! I'm working on a freebie that I hope to get posted tomorrow...so I'd best get back to it....cheery all!