Someone told me today that I am like Hunter S. Thompson, but with a work ethic.  I think it is the biggest compliment I have ever received.

I have noticed that this blog is more and more about me (yawn), and no longer even punctuated with the occasional recipe or picture of John Taylor 😉 .

This is a photo of me I posted on Facebook.  I just don’t want Facebook to own this memory.  I touched a wild horse on Port Meadow yesterday.  I love my Oxford friends.  And THANK YOU Paul Harvey for carrying me on your shoulders to get here.

And actually, I wonder if the best compliment I received was when I was in my mid 20s.  My boss and his wife couldn’t conceive and I offered to carry their baby for them.  (I read a book on it, to make sure I was ready to commit, before I offered.)  He cried and it took him 2 days to ask his wife.   Apparently, that wouldn’t help but they asked me if I would be their surrogate   They told me “there is nobody’s DNA we would prefer to yours.”  How’s that for a compliment?  Better than Jack Nicholson’s to Helen Hunt  “You make me want to be a better man”?  Unfortunately for all of us, I was too young to agree to that.  THEN I thought it the baby was half-mine, I might feel I had ownership over it and refuse to give it up.  Looking back, maybe it would have been good to have a half-me out there that I could occasionally spoil with love and affection.  I have no need to continue my genes.  There are enough out there thanks to my cousins.  I wanted children just because I am stagnating and I want to continue to improve and expand.  Work doesn’t love you back, and loving children unconditionally would continue to evolve me.  And I would love them back like that.  I have a lot of love to give.  Crazily, someone just offered to carry my baby for me recently.  If only it was that simple!

But then tonight, Amie told me I was her favourite Auntie.  And I saw the drawing in the downstairs loo.  I am dying with love and gratitude.  Am I going to have to move back to England?