Junk 'n' drunken ramblings

Hastily created at the request of a friend, this site is the cyber-home of 'fruitcake', AKA Diana Lane. Fruitcake also responds to 'Morticia', and 'It's my round - what are you drinking?'

The terrifying snapshot above is how many people on the web know me. It was taken when I needed a picture in a hurry as the ID necessary to sit my driving Theory Test. Caught in the rain on the way to the photo booth, and anxious to know what my kids are up to outside it, I'm staring waterlogged through masses of running mascara with the vacant 'stunned cod' expression typical of harassed mothers the world over.

Originally posted on-line some time ago because I thought it was funny, it transpires rather alarmingly that most people have taken it seriously. The good news is that the streets of Bristol aren't alive with stampeding cattle - I don't walk round looking like this all the time. Often, it's even worse...

I'm now mother to four children, two sons aged fourteen and fifteen, and two daughters - one aged ten months, the other aged ten years. Experience has taught me that to announce that you've completed your family takes you on the fast-track to the nearest maternity suite, so I'd like to state now my intention to have several more children. Millions more in fact.

Beyond an unhealthy fixation with the pile of circuits, chips and silicon that sits before me, I have many interests, including a passion for all things 'Ford Capri', drinking beer by the bucketload and ogling such unlikely sex symbols as Jimmy Nail, the guy in the kilt from a certain porridge ad and Sean the Security Guard. After my kids, my biggest obsession by far is with writing, and most days find me letting the words out to play.

While the editor of a small local rag currently threatens the community he serves with the publication of a poem of mine (movingly entitled 'McDonald's Burger? Off!') and I've recently had a piece appear in 'WebActive' magazine, the majority of my scribbles can be found in various places online. These are periodically rounded up, given a couple of cans of lager and a packet of peanuts and allowed to mingle together here on my website, where feedback, good, bad, but most definitely honest, is always welcome.