The Authentic Eclectic
Ten Things You Don’t Know About Me
Which May Encourage You To Reconsider Your Decision To Interact With Me

Veganism, distinct personalities with their own names, a wee bit of a temper, Mystic Meg and some fairly serious phobias. It’s a nonstop circus of chaos going on between my ears. Welcome to ten things you probably didn’t want to know about me.
Strangely, nobody tagged me in this challenge. Could it be you think you know everything you could possibly know — or wish to know — about me, owing to the fact that I’m somewhat — well — garrulous? Could it be that you were hoping not to encourage me to be even more — well — garrulous?
No such luck. Never backwards at coming forwards I’m writing a ten things post anyway. If you’ve written your own ten things post and I’ve missed it, please drop me a link below.
One
Long ago, I named the separate facets of my personality. It started in the 90s with Jodi, and somehow it just kept on going. I don’t lose time, and I don’t experience DID, but my personalities are pretty distinct, and sometimes even I blink a little when one surfaces quickly, slamming another out of the way.
- Alison is writing this. She’s pretty good at appearing normal, is kind to children and vulnerable people, and has highly eclectic taste in music, films and books. She’s the default driver of the meat suit.
- Daisy worked with my mentally ill and disabled clients back when I did that sort of thing, and helped me with grief and loss counselling; she can be a little too empathetic, is a bit of a hippy and favours 70s soft rock. She doesn’t get out much anymore, except when our kids visit. She’s hoping for grandchildren. The rest of us are not.
- Pearl was great for parent-teacher conferences, she’s organised and efficient and sometimes a wee bit dour. She’s handy if you need anything filed, typed or otherwise adminned (it’s a verb now idgaf). She makes all our appointments and talks to official sounding people on the phone. She does most of the driving, luckily for everyone on the Gold Coast.
- Jodi was named after the pig in the Amityville Horror. She likes to party and has a wicked sense of humour. She’s known for waiting till her friends nearly pass out in an alcoholic stupour and growling “Don’t go to sleep” in their ear to hilarious effect. She’s bad at saying no to bad ideas. She got invited out a lot when we were younger. Too much alcohol, or not enough sleep and Jodi will roll over and wake up Legion.
- You don’t want to meet Legion, or at least you don’t want to be the reason you’re meeting her. When discussing men who harm children, my mother would comment very quietly “Everyone has to sleep”. Legion smiles fondly at this memory. Hobbies include sharp objects and appearing harmless until you’re up really close.
- The Nameless One is locked away down deep, by mutual agreement of the other five. Right now she’s sleeping, and it’s best not to think about her too hard, lest she stirs. God Grant she lye stille.
You can take most of this with a pinch of darkly humorous salt. Or perhaps now I’m going for plausible deniability. You’ll never know.
Two
I’m a vegan. Or rather I was. Because I have gut permeability (perhaps the result of my diet growing up and penchant for garbage food as a result) the list of things I can eat or drink without being poisoned and passing out in an infected bloodstream induced semi-coma for a few hours is minimal. It took over 2 fun-filled years to figure out why eating seemingly anything at all, however “healthy” was now apparently killing me — mainly because GPs are given almost zero training in nutrition. Could have saved a lot of money for the Australian government on scans and tests if doctors accepted that we don’t need to medicate or operate on absolutely everything, sometimes diet does the trick.
I say this as a person who is most grateful for my cardiologist and other health care professionals and also as a person who takes my heart pills religiously. Well, better than religiously because that would amount to a couple of times a decade, and at funerals, which I try to avoid by taking the pills.
I really cannot face eating meat again, but after a lot of insistent nagging from my GP, diet consultant and my (also vegan) husband, I finally reincorporated free-range eggs back into my diet. Ethically, still want to be vegan. Practically, cannot be entirely at this point. And ultimately, human health matters more to me than animals because we’re “May Contain” vegans not “Must be organically produced in my backyard at sunrise on the solstice” vegans.
May contain vegans stay as far from all animal-related products as we can; we don’t lecture but are happy to talk to you if you ask. We accept that sometimes we might occasionally eat something accidentally that may contain something we wished it didn’t. In fact, we’re the majority of vegans. You only hear the loud and the weird ones.
I hope to return to the idyllic state of veganism again in coming months, now we know what’s wrong and are acting accordingly, if I can get my leaky gut under control and eat a few more of my normal foods again.
As a vegan, simply by existing, I materially disproved a few myths:
All vegans are skinny and sickly looking.
Er, no. I deffo need to lose weight (some of that is caused by health issues and some by a lifelong adoration for chocolate). My husband looks like he eats vegans. He still has the build of a rugby player, bricklayer or prison guard, all jobs he held when younger. He’s so solidly muscular that his veganism confuses people.
One morning, while having a breakfast meeting with workmates, he inadvertently caused an upset. He asked the girl to remove the bacon from his order, and when she queried it he said “I’m a vegan”. She sincerely believed he was joking and brought him bacon anyway, only to discover to her horror that it was not in fact a joke. True story. He’s the scariest looking vegan you’ll ever meet. But he was very nice to the poor mortified server, and just gave it to his boss who was pretty happy with the bacon windfall.
All vegans are from the luxury belief class
Er, no. We both come from proper working-class backgrounds. There is no level of working class more working class than a multi storey council flat in the wrong suburb in Glasgow. I tried to vegetarian (it’s a verb now too, get over it) for the first time around age 13, and was thwarted by my parents and pretty much everyone else in Glasgow for a very long time.
All vegans talk about it incessantly and are super judgey
Er, no thrice times. Witness this being the very first time I’ve ever posted an article about it. As with any group, you just notice the ones who are louder more. In fact, whenever I see someone write about being vegan — however respectfully — I inevitably brace for the attacks in the comment section from the Omnis.
Do feel free to attack me, of course. But bear in mind I’d rather gut you like a fish, than gut an actual fish. See below for more on that.
Similarly, vegan jokes are free-range (pun included free of charge) and I laugh at them too.
There are several reasons I don’t lecture or talk about it much: a) Ranting doesn’t change minds, it solidifies them. b) I was a meat-eater (rarely but still) until I was in my 40s so I won’t join the hypocritical dance many converts indulge in and c) I do care about how animals are treated and how appallingly cruel pretty much every animal production industry is — but I care about other things more and equally.
I’d rather we fixed misogyny first, it matters more to me. So I write about that and for other things I care about I send money where appropriate, sign petitions where I can and try to influence people against animal cruelty and other matters in less obvious ways.
Yes, but would you eat an animal to survive the zombie apocalypse?
Of course I would, you fucking fool. There are only five living creatures I wouldn’t eat if I was literally starving to death, I created two of them with my own body, and I’m not entirely sure about the other three.
Vegans lack essential (insert whatever)
It never ceases to amaze me that when I was cramming greasy chicken skin down my gullet on the regular nobody — and I mean nobody — gave the first damn about my vitamins, minerals, protein or B1 levels. Yet the instant I started eating more fruit and veg than I ever had in my entire life, everyone was suddenly super concerned with my nutritional intake.
I call bullshit.
Three
I played a little golf a few years back, even had a few lessons. I am aware that Simon has just let out a cry of dismay. I wasn’t bad, but life got in the way. I think I still have a couple of golf clubs in the boot of my car under a mountain of Coles plastic bags.

Four
I won my first ever mobile phone as the result of an online competition. The contestants had to tell most bum-bitingly embarrassing stories they could think of. I submitted 11 moments of gloriously dreadful personal humiliation, and was rewarded with a phone I had no idea how to use. I remember asking my ex husband what the little envelope thingy was on the screen. He said that would be a text message. Oh, quoth I, and paused for a moment.
“What’s a text message?”
It was a more innocent time.
Five
I believe in ghosts — whatever the word ghost means. In fact, I’ve seen one. I just don’t talk about it because people think you’re batshit and love explaining why you’re wrong.
Six
I am phobic about cockroaches. I can barely bring myself to type the word. I have a couple of horrifying stories I could tell you, except I can’t because that would mean thinking about them and I don’t want to do that.
I’m similarly phobic about heights to a ridiculous extent. Could tell you several humiliating stories about a few times this has caused me public embarrassment, but they’re just not that interesting. I can manage a small set of stepladders, just about.
Completing the picture that I’m more than a bit barmy, I’m also pretty claustrophobic. I did not realise how claustrophobic in fact until I had to have an MRI and was barely able to prevent myself shrieking “Coffin! Coffin!” in a wailing quaver. They had to take the MRI twice because — although I was lying perfectly still in a feat of sheer bloody minded determination — my insides were actually vibrating with terror. True.
Add that to the general gamut of mental health disorders I have previously disclosed if you’ve been paying attention and you get this: