draliman on life

Hello, it’s that time of the week when it’s all about me in Cee’s Share Your World challenge. Pop over to her photography blog and check out her cool pictures!

What is your most vivid memory of the kitchen in your childhood?
Hmm, kitchen, kitchen… Is that the one with the “cooker” in? Where the “food magic” happens?

Just kidding. I cook! Well, microwave. I remember standing on something and helping mum wash the dishes (at least I thought I was helping). I was 5 years old and we’d just moved to a new house. I was too old to go to nursery and I had to wait a couple of months for the new school year to start, so I had time on my tiny hands!

As a child, who was your favourite relative?
That would be my granny up in Scotland, who sadly passed away about 15 years ago.

Every summer, we went up to Scotland to spend a couple of weeks with her, and every Christmas she came down to spend a couple of weeks with us. Granny’s arrival was when Christmas really started. She was a very kind-hearted person and she’s sorely missed.

Here she is in the middle, with my Mum and Uncle, taken at Cape Wrath (Northern Scotland) in 1954.

What did you or did not like about the first apartment you ever rented?
We’ll pass over the room in student residences I had in my first year at university (it was a boring, standard student-issue room – bed, desk, chair) and go straight to the house I rented in Guildford with three other students in the second year. That was way more fun!

Our landlord was Iranian and as dodgy as they come. He didn’t even pay tax. He was the “agent” for the landlord, who was supposedly in Iran. Yeah, right. He used to go round to buy houses for “the landlord’s” portfolio with suitcases full of cash.

He’d come round to check the house, complain about the kitchen floor, then race around with a dustpan and brush demonstrating how to clean while we all stood and watched, trying desperately not to laugh. It was hilarious to watch!

Another time one of the lads had dropped tomato ketchup on the carpet and this guy came round. I had to stand on the stain and as the guy walked around the room, I just rotated on the spot to keep my foot on the ketchup.

We didn’t half have some fun that year. Ah, halcyon days!

What kind of TV commercial would you like to make? Describe it.
I’d prefer to make a comedy spoof TV advert. It would have loads of that “but wait, there’s more, order in the next 10 minutes and…” in it. I don’t really have any interest in adverts. I record most stuff that I watch on commercial TV and fast forward through the ads. I refuse to spend an hour of my life watching something that’s only 40 minutes long.