Story telling Sunday

My username on forums and here on blogger is 'Furrypig'. It also forms part of my email address and often leads to either strange looks or questions about the origins of the name.

Many years ago I attended a comprehensive school in Essex (I hasten to add I am not a true Essex girl having been born in Newcastle and spent most of my life away from the county!). Anyway my school had a fantastic farm unit with several breeds of farm animals and this included pigs. I fell in love with the pigs, such intelligent creatures, more clever than dogs and so protective once they have young... as the bite marks in a pair of Wellington boots demonstrated!

I used to go each weekend to help clean the pig sties out with my friend Mandy, overseen by a teacher and an older student called Nigel. The song 'Making Plans for Nigel' was popular at the time and we used to sing it to Nigel as we worked. Sometimes we mucked about and one week we were very silly as Mandy and I found some matches and set some of the straw alight. It went up in flames pretty quickly, but fortunately Nigel was there to put it out and save the day ( this was not my first misadventure into the realms of Pyromania, please return next month to read more about it on Story Telling Sunday on November 5th 'Bonfire Night'!!)

As I grew up I ended up collecting pig ornaments, pictures, postcards and most years receiving a birthday card with a pig on it somewhere (tomorrow is my birthday so I will let you know if the pig cards are still arriving after all theses years!). If anything had a pig on it, I probably would have had it. When I applied for university I put down on my application about my pig collection and one very serious chemistry professor was very interested, asking how many I had and where I kept them. It was only when he looked completely surprised when I said I kept over a hundred pigs in my bedroom that I realised he had thought I actually had a real herd of pigs!

Although my large collection of pig paraphernalia is long gone, there is evidence of pigs in my home to this day. I have some pig stamps I can craft with and have been sent several fabulous hand made pig cards since I started card making. Pigs are still my favourite animal and my heart fills with joy whenever and wherever I see pigs. My daughter thought

of the name 'Furrypig' as a joke several years ago and we cannot remember how it came up but I pinched the name as it is pretty unique and use it wherever I travel on the internet.

On a trip to Dorset earlier this year we came across some piglets (see above photos) and a glorious great big huge mother Sow. Unfortunately, previously mentioned daughter (now several years older!!) used this photo to 'tag me' on Facebook so my pig fame is spreading..... and yes there may be a resemblance!!

Please head over to Sian's blog for more tall tales on Story Telling Sunday

Lotsa love Furrypig xxx