The Story of My Life...Sort Of

If my life was made into a Hollywood blockbuster (and let's face it, it's on the verge) who would play me? What events would be dramatised? What would be my soundtrack? What would be changed to make me look less of a tool and just like a born winner? These are the kind of thoughts your average, blue-collar, person has every day. Am I right or am I right?!

Here are some solid gold notes I have prepared for those producers in LA (calm down peeps, you will get the full version soon enough. Jeez!):

• Suri Cruise would play the child version of me - but she will need to stop being so miserable. Child genius' SMILE, it's how we tell them apart from the stupid ones.
• My birthplace will resemble Balmory and neighbours will look like Brad and Angelina.
• Brad and Angelina will play my parents. Brad must be clean shaven. Angelina must revert to insanity years - pre-adopting babies phase.
• Edited episodes of Sweet Valley High can be dropped in to fill for my high school days.  
• A dance sequence will show the transition to womanhood, involving such moves as the 'drinking Jack Daniels and Coke shimmy' and the 'leaving every item of clothing all round the house whilst trying to crawl into bed drunk swing"
• There will be a 15 min intermission (I will file this under the 'career' section of my life).
• Billie's "Because we want to" will blare out to a scene of an adult me strutting down the street. Close up of my face. I wink. Black and White. Subtitles: "Winning since 1984". Fin.

Plain Jane

Nothing stumps an indecisive person more than being faced with any question that starts with "What is your all-time favorite..." Doesn't matter if it is a film, album, colour, I always struggle to come up with a definitive answer. However, when it comes to my all-time favorite book I respond with the same affirmative declaration as Charlie Sheen's "bi-winning" statement. Jane Eyre.

I have read this book more times than any other and each time I get lost in the story of one young woman's struggle to be loved and respected in equal measures. She is the original plain Jane who escaped  her cruel family, survived a children's home and tolerated the snobbery of the upper classes and in the end she gets her man. She is like a modern day Kerry Katona (except for the fairytale ending).

Jane would wipe the floor with Austen's Elizabeth Bennet and Emma - who are far too partial to go weak at the knees at the sight of a big mansion or wet britches. Pah! Jane deals with a mad woman in an attic burning a house to the ground without so much as a skewed bonnet. Heathcliff's Cathy might be a worthy advisory (the little madam!) yet she will always be Heathcliff's Cathy, whereas Jane proudly states that "Reader, I married him" Step off bitches! She chose her man, not out of money or desperation but purely because she wanted to. If this was still 1996 I might be inclined to shout GIRL POWER!