If you could interview anyone from your life, living or dead, who would it be and why?
My paternal great-grandmother, who I never met – she lived in Canada, and died before I was born. In fact, I didn’t even know she WAS my great grandmother until I was grown up – I thought she was actually my great aunt, my grandmother’s older sister, but it turns out she had my grandmother out of wedlock at a young age, and then emigrated to Canada leaving my grandmother to be brought up by her biological grandparents, who never really lived down the shame of it all and treated my grandmother atrociously (as if it was her fault for being born illegitimate). Old sins may have long shadows, but they make for the most intriguing characters… 🙂
As a child, did you have a nickname? Did you carry that with you throughout life or was it only in childhood that you used it?
My parents decided to call me Ruth as it was a nice short name and no-one would be able to shorten it. So of course I went through childhood being called Ruthie. My father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law still call me Ruthie, as does my mum and sometimes my husband every now and again, but most people know me as Ruth. Funnily enough some times I get called Ruthie informally at work, and as I answer to it as readily as Ruth, it gets used interchangably, and to be honest I really don’t mind either…
Give us three words that describe you?
Mother, grandmother, introvert. I’ve been a mum since I was 18, a grandmother since I was 38, and an introvert my whole life. Although those three words have popped up first in my head, I can immediately think of a whole lot more I could add to that rather perfunctory description. I suppose I’m an accumulation of lots of descriptive words, not really one thing more than anything else, but am an oddly eclectic mix of everything I’ve ever been and ever will be, a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of hopes and dreams and hurts and healings and mass confusion… I keep thinking it will get easier when I grow up, but here I am at 55, still waiting for clarity…
Sneaking into a second movie at the theatre (if you go to a movie house) – is that wrong or just harmless fun?
When I was a kid, there was one movie screen with a huge red curtain and red velvet seats and fancy gilded decor all around and you paid once for entry and watched whatever series of stuff was on, until you got fed up and left. Now there are many-screened multiplexes showing only one movie on each screen and the cost is so extortionate I never bother to go any more. I’d rather watch stuff on TV in the comfort of my own home…
If you had a time machine, would you go back to the past of forward into the future? Why?
Well, apart from going back in time to interview my long departed great grandmother (see Q1), I firmly believe time travel should remain in the world of fiction. I mean, I remember watching HG Wells ‘The Time Machine’ as a kid (on TV, not at the movies – see Q4) and freaking out at the idea of the Eloi and the Morlocks being all we had to look forward to in the future. OK, so maybe Michael J Fox as Marty McFly had a better time in the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy but still… I learned that messing with the past is still playing with fire. And having read (and thoroughly enjoyed) ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ where the poor guy time-hops back and fore with no warning I’m just glad that time for me moves one way only and at one steady pace, thank you very much…
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