Listing to Port

I wouldn't sail this ship if I were you

Five incomplete autobiographies

1. She is the mother of a preschool-age child and a baby. Most of her time is taken up in caring for their needs. She does not usually work outside the home, and can go weeks without leaving her small, poor local area or travelling in a car. She does not have many hobbies. She is usually in pyjamas by 7:30 and in bed with the lights out by 9:00.

2. She had the highest exam results in her county that year, and went on to study and teach theoretical astrophysics at one of the world’s top universities. She was known for not making eye contact and for wearing odd clothes to lessons. Sometimes her glasses were held together with sellotape.  She once attempted to invent a system of algebra because she was bored. Later she dabbled in Antarctic science and ended up in economic modelling, acquiring an Erdos number of five via two entirely separate routes.

3. She first shot a gun with live ammunition when she was twelve or thirteen, which was perhaps unusual for her country where there are few guns. These days, Apocalypse Now is one of her favourite films and she can no longer remember how many times she’s crossed the border between North and South Korea. Her bookshelves are stocked with the Marquis de Sade and William Burroughs. She has not eaten human flesh in nearly a year.

4. A person with a disability asked her for a completely reasonable accommodation to do with their disability and she said no. Her mobile phone once made a noise in a concert that was being broadcast live on Radio 3. She’s nearly hit a cyclist with a car door. She’s several times incorrectly implied to experts in things that, as a person who is vaguely interested in their field, she can do a simple thing-related task better than them. She has flounced out of a room martyrishly complaining about martyrdom.

5. She had more than forty My Little Ponies, aged 11, and she is still fond of making notes in multi-coloured pens.  She likes white chocolate, kittens, glitter and rainbows; she likes clothes and dressing up. In the past she has sewn and knitted her own clothes from patterns. She is interested in perfumery, although that will never come to much.

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