A Special Valentine's Guest Post: The Secret Life of Angloyankophile ... by Mr. Angloyankophile

Do you know the REAL Angloyankophile? There are almost 600 posts here which form a picture - but is it a true, and full one? 

For example, how many ChattyFeet socks does she own? 

There are many lovely pictures among these pages, but what about the out-takes? 

Most importantly, does she ever eat IN? 

From my vantage point as Mr 'ophile, I thought I would fill in a few salient details that have mysteriously not made it onto these pages:

Jäger-what? - Meeting Ms 'Yankophile for the first time while at university, I was struck by the tales of her drunken antics at her college, Mount Holyoke. 

Falling asleep outside the club after too much beer on her birthday - impressively British! 

However, over time some further important context has emerged. 'Too much' in fact meant, basically the neck of ONE beer. And the time of said disobedience? As far as I can make out it was about 8pm; with the party having kicked off half an hour before. 

In short, Angloyankophile is the worst (or maybe the best) drinker in the world! A sip is all it takes...

(h)Angry - You all know Angloyankophile as sweetness and light, sugar and spice etc. You think that's all? Just try her if dinner is running 20mins late. Shrift is short, stares are stony and a rage over something trivial is never far away. It's enough to terrify. In fact I'd better put the oven on ...

Intimidating - This one's probably not so surprising, but have you tried spending most of your time with someone who is an accomplished business person, musician, blogger, speech maker, speech writer, and has more friends already in her adopted country than most of us do in their own?! It's pretty intimidating, (could I mean irritating?). Don't worry, for the good of humanity I try to take her down a peg or two when I can ...

Mountainfearing  - At various times I notice Angloyankophile posting photos of the brooding and spectacular Mount Rainier as, variously: 

a) a picture for a blog post on the beauty of her home town;

b) the cover photo on Facebook or Instagram;

c) evidence of her undying love of nature. 

These are falsehoods. 

Angloyankophile is neither at all awestruck by mountains, or interested in walking on, climbing up or sliding down them. Below is a better representation of her 'true spiritual home':

Ear plugs at the ready - One other topic that seems to have been strangely neglected in the blog posts among these pages is Ms 'Yankophile's COLOSSAL SNORING. Seriously; where does it come from?! I don't know, but when she gets into full swing, resistance is futile.

'SLH (small luxury hotel) only please' - Angloyankophile was recently nominated as one of the UK's top travel bloggers - presumably for her fearless, independent voyaging across the globe. 

Call me a pedant but I think something has gotten lost in translation. For Angloyankophile's real outlook on travel, think Hilton instead of hostel, BA rather than backpacking, spa not Spartan. Left to her own devices I think she'd spend most years in the same resort in Thailand (even getting her there took weeks of persuasion!). 

Mr and Mrs Smith would be proud - but come on, the odd cockroach never hurt anyone!

Footsie - Angloyankophile never shows her face on her blog posts to protect her anonymity. I'll tell you one other thing you'll never see: her bare feet. Ballet shoes put paid to that; they are now more trapezoidal than feet-shaped. Sorry. 

Arachnophobia (the phobia, definitely not the film) -  You'd assume that with such a vibrant social life, trendy friends and hobbies (disclaimer: I work in finance, so to me pretty much everything is trendy to me), Angloyankophile would also naturally have a great taste in films. 

I think she would, except for one major issue - she is totally chicken! I'm not talking about horror movies here; I think she had nightmares from Monsters Inc. So it's a Disney diet for us...

Brilliant - And, in addition to all that, she's - well - brilliant. 

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

- Mr Angloyankophile

Well, there you have it. All my secrets revealed: from trapezoidal feet to my "colossal snoring" (I highly doubt this, by the way, though the foot thing is true). Thank you, sweetie. Happy Valentine's Day :)