{"id":166,"date":"2022-04-27T05:17:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T04:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imaginarymongoose.co.uk\/blog\/?page_id=166"},"modified":"2022-04-27T05:42:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T04:42:45","slug":"who","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.imaginarymongoose.co.uk\/blog\/who\/","title":{"rendered":"Who&#8217;s Here"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">At the moment it&#8217;s just me, <strong>Claire Jordan<\/strong>, but other authors may be acquired later, and any regulars will be added to this page.  As to who I am, in purely practical terms, I&#8217;m a woman in her sixties with a degree in Biological Science from Edinburgh University, who managed to work units of astronomy, psychology, Elementary Gaelic and Scottish folk tradition into that degree; who lives in a rented maisonette in a village in the middle of a moor in the middle of central Scotland; and has been at various times a secretary on a major newspaper, a programmer and Information Analyst with the NHS, a shop-owner, a Tarot-reader, a carer, a professional designer of wargame figures and the Publicity Officer of a human rights charity. I currently do odd bits of freelance admin. and copy-editing (especially buffing up the English of non-native spreakers), Tarot-reading and candle-making, whilst coping with the vagaries of Long COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.imaginarymongoose.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/passport-photo-small.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-173\" width=\"166\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.imaginarymongoose.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/passport-photo-small.jpg 650w, http:\/\/www.imaginarymongoose.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/passport-photo-small-226x300.jpg 226w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 166px) 100vw, 166px\" \/><figcaption>The photo&#8217; is me circa 2004. I don&#8217;t have a more recent one.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I am the daughter of two strikingly original and characterful soldiers, Kathleen Jordan and Rory Langford Rae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a pagan who considered converting to Judiasm, only to find out years later that I was half Jewish, and that my Catholic father had been born Jewish and much of his family had died in Auschwitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a pagan who performs the tasks my gods set me cheerfully and willingly &#8211; and those tasks frequently involve helping abuse survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a psychic with a degree in hard science or, if you prefer, a scientist with psychic abilities. There&#8217;s a lot of it about &#8211; the most accurate clairvoyant I know has a PhD in cell-surface chemistry. I am ruthlessly, aggressively logical, which includes believing in the things I have done and witnessed &#8211; many of which are deeply bizarre-o.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a kind, motherly person who enjoys the rare opportunity to be as aggressive as I know I can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am either lucky or unlucky in love, depending on how you look at it. All the men I&#8217;ve loved have been wonderful but they all died (liver disease; post-operative blood-clot; cancer).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite living in Scotland, by birth I&#8217;m both London Irish and a Maid of Kent.  Through the adoption of my father I am a Rae of Keel House in County Kerry and the granddaughter of the Kazini Elisa Maria Dorgi Khangsarpa of Sikkim (who started out as Ethel Maud Shirran, a shorthand-typist in Edinburgh in the 1920s); the great-granddaughter of George Shirran who was RQMS Black Watch in WWI; the five-greats granddaughter of the folk poet John Shirran of Sandbrigs and the four-greats granddaughter of his son Jamie, who wrote the Bothy Ballad called <em>The Buchan Turnpike<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a word child, and English is my bitch. Other languages, not so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I never knew my father &#8211; he had to go out to India on a job when I was a few weeks old, and died in a car crash there &#8211; but I&#8217;ve seen letters he wrote to the press and they are so like my writing style that it&#8217;s creepy. English was his bitch too. That aside, I am what my mother, my very peculiar secondary school (Heriot&#8217;s Wood\/Bentley High in Stanmore) and the books of Nicholas Stuart Gray with their gentle, dreamy boys and tough, bold girls have made me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh and I&#8217;m also a rodent-enthusiast; a life-long, loyal Ricardian who also has an embarrassingly soft spot for Henry Tudor; a long-term SF fan; one of the most dedicated canon nit-pickers in the Harry Potter fandom; the winner of two quite prestigious awards for poetry; and the go-to person on Quora for explaining evolution to Creationists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the moment it&#8217;s just me, Claire Jordan, but other authors may be acquired later, and any regulars will be added to this page. As to who I am, in purely practical terms, I&#8217;m a woman in her sixties with a degree in Biological Science from Edinburgh University, who managed to work units of astronomy, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-166","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Who&#039;s Here - Old Tails for New Primates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.imaginarymongoose.co.uk\/blog\/who\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who&#039;s Here - Old Tails for New Primates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At the moment it&#8217;s just me, Claire Jordan, but other authors may be acquired later, and any regulars will be added to this page. 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