CURRENT MISSION

Weird question... To be well, I think, and to have a giggle while I'm at it.

ABOUT ME

I've been pretty transient my whole life. I've now been staring at this plain white box for 20 minutes. How do you fill one of these? Among many things I've been a professional dancer, cafe owner on London's Camden Passage market, singer and guitarist with bands of varying degrees of mediocrity, maths geek, pub philosopher, and a writer, editor and sub editor for a load of papers and mags (Guardian, Sunday Times, Sun, Harper's Bazaar, OK!, Telegraph...). I've circumnavigated the globe alone, just the once, but it was wonderful. I learned to sail with a hippy, who was also a world-champion sailor, with no toilet on his boat (or motor – there are some great stories about that...) who I happened to meet on a mountain. I suppose I tend to feel as if I'd like to do as much as I can, for this five minutes I've been gifted to stand here on this spinning lump of rock. This is so hard to write: for everything that goes in I feel like a) I'm a wanker; and b) I have a thousand other things that should go in. Why don't you give me a shout, and I hope I'll dispel any preconception of idiocy you might have wrongly gathered...

PHILOSOPHY

Be kind, learn new stuff, and always behave with integrity.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I haven't yet! I've got my fingers crossed to be in Chicago in July/August, but in the meantime, I have couches here. Come try them out.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Fun. Very fun.

Interests

If you can find something I'm not interested in, you win a prize. There are a few on offer, mainly as no challenger has ever been successful. Right now, my main interests include teaching myself how to play piano; nursing a poor ficus tree that, with my shameful neglect, I brought to within an inch of death back to a full a vibrant life; learning improv comedy; and exclusively hanging out with top-notch, kind and awesome people, old and new.

• writing
• singing
• performing arts
• dancing
• pilates
• instructor
• drinking
• pub crawls
• flying
• boating
• juggling
• guitar
• piano
• sailing
• boxing
• anatomy
• mathematics
• nursing
• philosophy

Music, Movies, and Books

Oh my word! I can't answer this. TBC.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

ONE? OK. I met an amazing sailor, who'd won loads of trophies for sailing round the world. He took me and two others out for a two-week sail off east Australia. The whole time was breathtaking – he knew where the turtles were hatching, where the baby sharks were feeding, all that kind of stuff. He was a real hippy; which meant he knew the water like the back of his hand, no engine (oil hater) and we had to do toilet in a bucket and chuck it over the side. It was cool. But one morning, questioning him about his various round-the-globe races, I asked him about sailing at speed through the night, and what it might entail. He cut me short: "Wanna go on a night sail?" he said. Yes. Yes, it turned out I did. We upped anchor at around 10pm and sailed until 5am, singing and drinking rum (with my anxious blood, I made us perform two 'man overboard' drills with a bucket: one at dusk and one at night). Anyway, so there we were. Once we caught the wind we were flying. We had bioluminescence bouncing off the side of the boat like fireworks, we were taking it in turns at the tiller and navigating by the stars (I told you he was a hippy). We watched the moon rise, huge, like a white sun, over the horizon at 2am. Then, hours later, as we came in to dock, I went to the bow with a big torch to scan for a buoy, while the other three waited in the stern. There was absolute group focus and silence as I Germanically and calmly scanned the surface of the ink-black water with the torch, looking for any movement to indicate a mooring. After minutes there was a ripple. I returned the beam to its location, and in a split second the biggest dolphin I have ever seen leapt clean out of the water. Instinctively I followed his arc with the beam from the torch, which illuminated this glorious silver beast as he executed his faultless dive and reentered the water. In awe of what I'd seen I silently looked over my shoulder to check I wasn't alone, to see my three sailing buddies squashed in a row facing me. They uttered "Woooaaaahhhh..." in unison. It was a magical evening, followed by this magical event. Priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Teach, Learn, Share

As an ex-dancer, Pilates instructor and anatomy and physiology freak, I can go on and on and on about all things 'human body' for, probably, too long. Everyone tells me they enjoy it though, and I hope they aren't just being polite. I also play guitar (learning piano, and have one at my flat), sing questionably, juggle, write, and many other things too tedious to list.

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Fiji, Greece, India, New Zealand, Philippines, Spain, Thailand, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

United Kingdom

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