4 x 4 meme

4X4 meme

I was tagged by my friend of a friend Bunny Corcoran 

So here goes.

4 places I have been (a place or situation)

1)  In a wild, ear throbbing noisy nightclub under Frankfurt airport in Germany.  I went a few times when I was out there working..  It was 1990 and house music was very much in.  I dread to think what I was wearing at the time (!) but I recall being wise enough to stay away from the drug taking around me.

2) Watching the sun rise over Mont Blanc from the Italian side.  I worked in the mountains near to Aosta, Italy for 2 summers in the 1990s.  A group of us hiked from our base camp in the dark... it was a really hard route to take even in the daylight..but the views more than made up for it when we were huddled together watching the break of day.

3) In a waiting room at a top Pediatric cardiologist in a hospital in Connecticut.....who was running very late.  The wait seemed like it took forever...it was probably 30 minutes.  There were lots of other parents with even sicker kids than we had.  But they weren't necessarily holding test results which showed gross abnormalities with their baby's heart beat - only because the nurse had input some of the baby's data wrong.  That was probably the longest wait of my life.

4)   The beach in Monte Carlo.  It was full of very beautiful posing people.  I was there alone feeling very self conscious.  I remember going in the sea and being able to see the fish which were beautiful.....but feel them swimming around my legs which was really pretty creepy and made me leg it out of the water pronto!

4 jobs I have had.

1)  I worked as a waitress in a coffee shop  in my home village from the age of 13.  I worked more hours than I was legally  supposed to  and spent the majority of my spare time there as a teenager.  In a way it saved me from getting into a lot of pickles.....kept me on the straight and narrow.  And it is also where I met hubby for the very first time.  AFF - I know I still have to explain all that.

2) I worked in a card shop in UK called ATHENA for a summer - it actually sold prints, greeting cards and other silly things that were over priced and you generally never needed.  It was in Leeds City Centre and the pay was really quite dire but it was an awful lot of fun.  I was there just for the holidays....but loved serving people and seeing all the behind the scenes activity of a city centre store.  The manager did nothing more than read the tabloids cover to cover.  The week after I left he apparently took the days' earnings to the bank via the betting shop.  His horse (a sure thing) didn't make it and the Police were called.

3) Worst job ever was whilst I lived in Essex.  By this stage I had graduated from University, had my MA firmly under my belt and was about to go to Cambridge University....and I ended up working the worst job in a bubble making factory.  Yes as in childrens' bubbles.  It was factory production line work....clock in, clock out....mundane tasks such as putting the silly plastic wands in the bottles of liquid bubbles..all by hand.  I think I did about 5 weeks there with overtime putting together Christmas party bags.  Some poor sods had been there for years.  One man had lost his arm in a dodgy machine of theirs but the bright side seemed to be that Gaffney's (the company) would never sack him...he was thus guaranteed a job for life.  Yes, this was actually considered the bright side!! 

4)  I worked in Italy for 2 summers teaching English as a foreign language to spoilt Italian children.  Their parents paid an arm and a leg to basically dump them in gorgeous mountain locations for a week and we lived in basic dormitories with bland Italian food doing day trips to interesting places and yelling at them using English phrases along the way.  I recall helping at check in with my pigeon Italian and counting the millions of Italian Lire being left as spending money. 

4 of my favourite foods.

1)  Salt and pepper calamari.  I lived off this during my pregnancy in Atlanta.  It was my craving.,  And they did delivery service from the local Chinese restaurant.  It was ridiculously over priced but I just needed it so much.  Since we left Atlanta I have had this in other restuarants but it has never quite lived up to the way I recall it from there.

2) Carne Asada.  I had never really had much Mexican food before I came to America but I discovered a really cheap and cheerful place in San Diego.  I loved their food but so did my hips.....so I had to limit it whilst I was there.  I guess this is where I discovered it and I am not sure whether it is the best - but the Mexicans working there were always so lively and cheerful I rarely ventured anywhere else to try it.

3) Fish and chips.  Proper ones.  As in the ones in England - not the 'English style fish and chips' served over here.  Just not the same.  I eat them way to often when I return to UK and so again gain all the lbs I don't need/want to.

4) A really good Sunday lunch at a UK pub.  A nice one with a proper coal fire - not some chain with a laminated menu which offers the same things up and down the whole UK.  Preferably with cauliflower cheese and carrots.  And beef.  Got to be roast beef.

4 scenes in movies I wish I'd written and directed.

This is a hard one.

1).  The scene near the end in Goodfellas where Henry Hill has his busy day, dealing drugs, making his spaghetti sauce, driving all over town being watched by FBI helicopters and dealing with his dim babysitter who ultimately makes a call from his landline and gets him caught.  It is his downfall - but the scene has such a pace to it - you feel its urgency in the way he tells the day's events...until it comes to a standstill.

2).  The Cider House Rules.  I loved this book but thought the film version was so far removed from the story...it really didn't do John Irving's book justice at all.  The majority of the scenes with Michael Caine were quite badly written but his nightly readings of the bedtime stories to the orphans was just perfection.

3). Fargo.  Frances McDormand playing the hapless pregnant cop Marge Gunderson was brilliant.  She so deserved that Oscar.  I especially liked the scene where she interviewed the suspicious husband in his car salesman office (William H Macy).  If you have never seen the movie it is one to rent...although I told my best friend this and she couldn't get past the violence and told me I was sick for considering it such a good movie!!!

4). Secrets and Lies by Mile Leigh from 1996 - when Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn)  is in touch with her distant brother Maurice  (Timothy Spall) about the state of her house...the house they had grown up in but the one he had turned his back on to marry and move on up in the world.  Very well acted and just perfect in the anger/denial between them. 

We are supposed to tag 4 other people so I hereby tag

1.  geepeemum

2.  onefeistymama

3. snickollet 

4.  Karen 

But don't feel obliged you HAVE to do it.

But let me know here if you do!!