rivettingKateTaylor

Tag – I’m it. I’m not tagging anyone back – I just wanted to waste valuable work time figuring out seven random facts about myself that wouldn’t put you to sleep.

My real name is Kathryn and despite telling people to call my husband by his given name (Thomas, not Tom) and my son by his given name (Lachlan not Lachie) – I will forever be known as Kate. Aside from the odd pet name Katie from family members,  my name change took place when I went to stay with my mother’s cousin, named Kathryn, who everyone but me called Kate. So this little 11-year-old madam went home and refused to answer to Kathryn (even armed with threat of detention from my teachers). Ever since, I have been known as Kate (or worse – call me anything you like, except late for breakfast as my father used to say)

The name on my passport and the tax man’s hit list, Kate Taylor, is shared with several US singers, a furniture maker, a yoga instructor, some doctors, quite a few journalists and authors, an ad rep, cartoonist, a child health researcher and a famous UK sex columnist (thanks Google – and that was only results 1-60 from almost a million). Mmmm. is it any wonder I have retured to my maiden name and created Kate Rivett-Taylor (hence the rivettingkatetaylor blog).  There are 24,000 hits for googling Kate Rivett but only 12 on Kate Rivett-Taylor and they’re all me!!! As far as I know, I am the only Kate Rivett-Taylor in the world.

I love my Mum.

My favourite smell is freshly baled hay. After nodding with agreement recently when a friend put just-mowed grass in that category, I was chucked back in time yesterday as I caught a whiff of dry hay. Talk about a whizz back to your childhood. Of course hay means summer which means swimming, tennis, bare feet, reading books in the sun, chilly pinot gris, divebombing off the wharf at Kinloch – Lake Wakatipu, sand and surf at Gisborne, picnics, Dagwood sandwiches… all my favourite things (none of which relate to having to stack the said hay bales for my parents, which I managed to get out of at every possible opportunity – sorry about that!)

I once worked as a weighbridge operator for a grain trader near Hull, England. Beats writing. Beats thinking about random facts about myself! Two to go.

I truly believe the time we spend with our children before they go to school sets them up for the people they will be (and I was lucky enough to work from home so they never had to go to full time child care). My two are laid back, happy children who enjoy each other’s company, can amuse themselves no matter what the situation, are well behaved in public and who still unashamedly kiss me goodbye when the school bus is waiting to pick them up. Long may it last!

I love doing things for other people – my church newsletter, PTA fundraising – usually cooking on a BBQ, helping the teachers at school, organising our community Christmas party at the local hall, doing baking for people who have had a death in the family or the arrival of a new baby, joining the tennis committee and being president of my netball club…. that’s what living in rural NZ is all about.

See seven random facts about my rural journo friend Ele on http://homepaddock.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/tagged-twice/

She tagged me!