Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

In Brief

My name is Claire. I live in the “Little Down­stairs House”, in a beau­ti­ful part of Eng­land, with my part­ner of ten years (who I refer to on my blog as “K”). We share our home with two beloved hounds: our adop­ted Grey­hound, Ziggy and our Whip­pet puppy, Hec­tor.

An advoc­ate of lifelong learn­ing, I have spent most of my adult life study­ing with The Open Uni­ver­sity. Dur­ing this time, I gained a Cert HE in Web Applic­a­tions Devel­op­ment and an Under­gradu­ate Dip­loma in Lit­er­at­ure and Cre­at­ive Writ­ing. I also recently com­pleted a BA (Hons) Open Degree, with First Class Hon­ours. I worked so hard and for so long for that degree, every time I say I got a “First”, I get teary-eyed.

I cur­rently gig as a Staff Writer for the video­gam­ing news web­site, GGS­Gamer, and am in the throes of draft­ing my first fic­tion novel (Crime-Thriller). I drink only tea, cof­fee and Ribena, but not all at once. Films with Julia Roberts and/or Jim Carey get on my tits; Jeremy Clark­son is my hero and I have held an almost-lifelong ambi­tion to hug Boy George and say, “Thank You”.

Interests

My music taste is extremely var­ied and spans from Kylie Minogue to Mar­ilyn Man­son. I listen to my favour­ite songs on a loop, sing along to old Motown records and am drawn to short, andro­gyn­ous, male gui­tar­ists of rather dubi­ous per­sua­sions (Prince and Brian Molko, expli­citly).

Favour­ite films include: The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Find­ing Nemo, The Night­mare Before Christ­mas, The Little Mer­maid and The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre (the 70s ori­ginal, not the dire remakes/sequels).

Pho­to­graphy

I love pho­to­graphy and spend most of my spare time tak­ing pic­tures, I pub­lish my efforts online for fun and to motiv­ate myself to improve. I know it seems that every­one online with a high-end Digital SLR likes to think they’re giv­ing David Bailey a run for his money, but pho­to­graphy as an art form is some­thing I’ve grown to love and appre­ci­ate since study­ing it at Col­lege and it’s now a sig­ni­fic­ant pas­time that allows me indulge my cre­at­ive urges.

Ori­gin­ally schooled in the great tra­di­tion of 35mm black and white film, dark­rooms and chem­ical tanks; I now shoot solely in digital format. My ‘negs’ are RAW and Adobe Pho­toshop Ele­ments 8 is my dark­room of choice.

A Nikon girl at heart, I cur­rently shoot with a Nikon D70s and a Nikon CoolPix P6000. Occa­sion­ally, I break out an old Polar­oid 600 CL Extreme, too. All my film has expired, but I just think that adds to the fun.

Some pho­tos on this blog (circa 2001–2007) were also taken using: a Nikon E3200/CoolPix 3200 and a Min­olta Dynax 404si SLR. I have since donated these and other pho­to­graphic equip­ment to The Dis­abled Pho­to­graph­ers’ Soci­ety. If you have any digital/analogue cam­eras or pho­to­graphy equip­ment that you no longer use, please con­sider donat­ing them to The DPS. They are able to specially-adapt the cam­eras so that those with limited/no use of their hands can use them and they also adapt other equip­ment to fit onto wheelchairs.

Bunny

The little pink rab­bit used as my Gravatar, is known as “Bunny”. Bunny and I have been together since my birth (he can be seen in some of my baby pho­tos) and have remained insep­ar­able ever since. I’m not sure who bought him for me, but I do know (by remov­ing his little striped out­fit and look­ing closely at the very faded tag) that he came from MotherCare.

Bunny is very well traveled and through­out my child­hood stayed with Dad in the many dif­fer­ent houses in which he lived, until com­ing to live with me some time dur­ing my teens. As the res­ult of sev­eral moves and being over 25 years old (which is ancient for a cuddly toy), Bunny now looks a little bit squashed and misshapen.

The pho­to­graph used in the icon was taken from Bunny’s “good side” on 24^th Janu­ary 2006, whilst he sat on the fluffy com­forter on my bed. Bunny cur­rently sits on my desk, propped next to my ori­ginal, red, 1970s rotary dial tele­phone. I like to keep my off­line meth­ods of com­mu­nic­a­tion “old school”.

Recently, I dis­covered that there are other “Bunny“s out there after a reader sent in pho­tos of Didi, a pink rab­bit that was clearly a close rel­at­ive. Bunny very much enjoyed see­ing pho­tos of Cousin Didi and would ask that if you too have a pink/striped, “Bunny” (circa 1980s, pos­sibly of Moth­er­Care ori­gin), please send pho­tos and mes­sages of squee to: bunny@claire.nu.

Phys­ical

I am short, decidedly skinny and nat­ur­ally a dish­wa­ter blonde, but I have dyed my hair since I was about 16; I change the col­our I use frequently.

Dis­abled since birth, I have been a full-time manual wheel­chair user for well over a dec­ade (I have Cereb­ral Palsy and Scoli­osis). The Argon Ti by Quickie is my chair of choice and I cur­rently rock a cus­tom, two-tone paint-job. I talk about my dis­ab­il­it­ies, in detail, here.

I have no tat­toos, but bear many sur­gical scars and 14 piercings:

Ears

• 2 x Stretched Lobe #1 [6g/4mm]
• 2 x Stretched Lobe #2 [10g/2.4mm]
• 2 x Stretched Lobe #3 [14g/1.6mm]
• 3 x Outer Conch/Flat [16g/1.2mm] (left-only)
• Inner Conch [14g/1.6mm] (right-only)

Face & Body

• Stretched Nos­tril [14g/1.6mm]
• Mon­roe [16g/1.2mm]
• 2 x Nipple (hori­zontal) [14g/1.6mm]

Send­ing Email & Gifts

If you would like to con­tact me, feel free to write to me at this address: claire@claire.nu.

As I study from home, I get chance to check my Email about every, oh I don’t know, 10–20 minutes? So, I will most def­in­itely read what you send my way and will reply to it when I can.

I get a lot of Email, it can take a few days/a week for me to reply — it’s not per­sonal, it’s just that check­ing Email and writ­ing Email have two very dif­fer­ent time-frames.
I really enjoy get­ting Email from people who visit this site and “read me”. Just know­ing that someone took time out of their lives to say “Hi” to an Inter­net stranger (i.e. me) for no other reason than to just be nice, can really make my day. There­fore, the oppos­ite is also true when con­cern­ing those that send negative/insensitive mes­sages. Please remem­ber, there is a real per­son on the other end of this Email address.

By send­ing me stuff through Email that makes me laugh, cry, insanely happy/angry, you agree to acknow­ledge and accept that I may blog about it. How­ever, I will never pub­lish your Email address, except for in cases where people are being a com­plete arse.

Should you wish to, you may also pur­chase Little Green Par­cels of Joy for my birth­day and Christ­mas via my Amazon Wish­list. If you are wor­ried about retain­ing your pri­vacy, be sure to tick the “Does your order con­tain gift items? / Order­ing a gift?” check­box when order­ing — this then hides your full address so that I never see it and it is never prin­ted on the pack­ing slip!