day 19: a talent

I'm not really very talented. No, not being falsely modest or doing myself down here, I'm not. I am a passable cook, quite handy at DIY, rather good at Scr@bble and very good at my job - but I'm otherwise not especially talented.

I do, however, like making my own Christmas cards and I think that they come out ok.

day 18: my wedding

I've never had a wedding and, as A would rather gouge out his own eyes with a blunt spoon than get married, I'm never likely to.

day 17: a piece of art

Deg@s' Little D@ncer. I've loved this piece since I was about 6 and taking ballet lessons - I wanted to look just like her!

day 16: a song that makes me cry

I have three songs that make me cry. They are all associated with different times or events, and I couldn't decide on one in particular. So here they all are:

"She G0es On" by Cr0wded H0use.
This belongs to my BFF Kay. She was in her final illness and her husband (Marathon Man) and I were at her bedside. Kay suddenly asked Marathon Man to sing this song to her, which he did. She said that it would always remind her of an afternoon only a couple of months previously when the three of us were sunning ourselves in their back garden, Marathon Man absorbed in the sports section of the Saturday Gu@rdian while Kay and I were working on the short story we were writing together. When Kay died, this song was the one Marathon Man chose to play at the start of her funeral. It was years before I could listen to it again.

"Lean 0n Me" by Beth Ort0n.
After Kay died Marathon Man and I became very close friends. We would talk to or email each other every couple of days and would spend weekends together several times a year. The weekends were invariably fuelled by wine and music and each night lasted into the small hours of the following morning. One of those Saturday-night-Sunday-mornings was played to a close by Marathon Man picking "Lean on Me". As he lined up the track he said that the song always brought me to his mind because he had leant on me since Kay died, and that he "genuinely believed" that I saved his life in those early dark and despairing months.

"Fix Y0u" by C0ldplay.
I played this over and over and over again in the days after losing Starchild, just for the lines "and the tears come streaming down your face, when you lose something you can't replace".
It is made worse because I can't stand this band or the constipated-piglet vocal stylings of the lead singer and I hate that they are the ones responsible for this song!

day 15: my dream house

You can barely make it out in this photo - this was taken in 1997, almost a decade before I got my first digital camera with optical zoom. But that white building in the distance is my dream house. It is on the Maine coast, at a heavenly town called B00thb@y H@rb0ur. It's perched on the rocks with the sea on three sides and I fell in love with it instantly.

Although I loved B00thb@y H@rb0ur, I have since then seen even more beautiful places where I have day-dreamed of living but always in this house...

day 14: a non-fiction book

"The R0ses of No M@n's Land" by Lyn MacDonald. I read this first in 1989 and I remember being so absorbed in it that I missed my Tube stop and found myself at the end of the line. I had to put the book away for the return journey so that I didn't spend the entire evening travelling the District Line from one end to the other.

It's an amazing, vivid, moving, wrenching report of keeping soldiers alive on the front line during the First World War. It makes you feel uncomfortably like you are at a field hospital in Flanders or France as you read it.

30 day journal day 13: a fictional book

I'm not sure how today's item differs from day 4 (your favourite book) so I have decided to take the Desert Isl@nd Discs approach and choose the one I would get most out of for the greatest length of time. It has to be the complete novels of J@ne Auste.n.