Sally Gwenarby
Who the hell is Dii Hunter-Hammond? What is she?
Aimless? Well, tend to be a bit. Never felt ‘driven’. A wool-gatherer but not a wealth or position gatherer, sadly.
Nondescript? Yep. Never stood out from any crowd, try to avoid them anyway. Not a tall poppy, and happy with that.
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Attracted to women? Oh boy, yes. My attraction to the physical charms of the female amounts to borderline monomania.
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Vacant? Well, pretty. I spent a whole wedge of my time in school staring out the window looking like I’d had pre-frontal lob-job.
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Active? I like to think so. I climb fells (thanks, Mr. Wainwright) and bike, though I need an e-bike now for the more bastardy hills.
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Tedious? Terrific? A twat? My ten year old son would unhesitatingly say: “All three”.
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Arsey? Sometimes, defo. Less so than when I was younger. But still manage to piss off a few though -keep my hand in.
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Relaxed? Not really. Got a wodge of OCD. Soon as I sit down, I think ofsomething I need to check… three times.
'Aquair pump'
Dii was born in 1972 in Emsworth Maternity Home and grew up in Barn Green, a village in Hampshire near Portsea
She attended Barn Green infant and Middle school, then Cowdown Comprehensive School, just like Wendy, and also had a pretty shit time there, but not as bad as Wendy’s. Played a bit of hockey, managed to crawl up from bottom to second to top maths stream, cruied English, and was always interested in science and geography, but hated human geography, preferring physical geography, especially geology. It was the sudden and too frequent transitions from the formation of glaciers or the evolution of a river, to some shite about coffee exports from Bristol or the dsitribution of religious groups in the middle east that put her off taking Geog at GCSE.
She also realised during this time that she was attracted to women.
Irina
and
Discovery
When 16, though she had reasonable GCSEs, Dii was disaffected and had no sense of direction and wanted to rebel and so joined the Royal Navy as a wren cartographer. During her first draft, to a ship she found herself bored and frustrated with the routine work. She never got caught in (what were then) illicit relationships with women, but it was not for want of trying. She was on the point of trying to leave when the Navy announced wrens would now go to sea. But there was little chance of going to sea as a cartographer and so she changed branch to electrical mechanic (MEM (L) as there was a very good chance of a sea draft.
After her training in Sultan she was drafted to the amphibious ship, HMS Essex, which she loved. By By the time she went back ashore she was passed the leading hand.
After a couple of years ashore she returned to Essex as an LMEM(L) and reached the rate of petty officer -POMEM(L)- before deciding she’d had enough. In Dubai and her mates spent their time looking round gold shops and eating big macs, saying it was the best place they’d ever been in the mob. She thought it was a nasty, boring, de-humanised, glass-and-steel shithole stuck in the middle of the desert. She realised that she no longer was on their wavelength. She left the RN after 12 years, in 2002, and returned to her original love of geology. She read for an Earth Science degree in Aberrheidol University, followed by a masters' in Environmental Studies.
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After working as a tour guide in the local hydro-electric power station and as a clerk in a supermarket, she got a job as a research technician in the University biological research department, where she remains to this day.
Personal life.
Right from early isolation in infant school, Dii knew she was not ever going to be a social butterfly of any sort. She segued neatly from being uncoolly dressed by her mother in childhood to dressing herself, equally uncoolly, as a teenager. She had few friends and suffered bullying from her inability to fit in.
Pastimes and interests
Dii has always loved walking. She has an especial affinity for the South Downs, to which she was introduced by her grandmother with whom she used to stay in her South Downs village home, as a child. She later described these stays and the walks on the downs as the most vivid moments of her life.
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She is an avid reader. Tolkien and Richard Adams are her favourite authors. She also enjoys drawing and painting though admits that she’s ‘pretty crap at it’.
She is also a keen motorcyclist, and it was repairing The BSA Bantam her father gave her that she developed the interest in mechanics that would eventually inspire her branch change in the Navy to mechanic. She is currently ‘between motorbikes’.
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Writing has been something she has always enjoyed, and though she has never managed to get anything published. She finds that creating plots, characters and narrative as indispensable ‘brain cleansing’. She likens her writing to being like some old geezer spending hours building a ship out of matchsticks -completely pointless and futile, but fun.