20 vital things about me

Yes, after weeks of one-post-every-blue-moon, here's my second today!
20 vital things you simply have to know about me.
1. I used to hate the fact that I have red hair, but now I'm pretty pleased with it.
2. But I hate having the white-never-tans skin that goes with it.
3. I'll be 39 in 10 days and don't (as far as I can tell) have any grey hairs.
4. I tend to be pessimistic, but usually feel justified.
5. I have always (well, since 1978 anyway) had a crush on John Travolta-as-Danny-Zuco
6. When I was 6, my parents had the brilliant idea of sending me, their hopelessly shy and geeky only daughter, to be the only girl in a boys' school in Scotland for a year or so.
7. I don't think I was very happy at the school (don't really remember), but that summer - 1976 - was idyllic.
8. I love musicals, particularly modern ones, but HATE "Dancer in the dark", mainly because I can't stand Björk.
9. My cat, T, is the most perfect feline you're ever likely to come across.
10. I often feel very guilty about the fact that I live so far away from my father (he lives in Scotland, I live in the south of France), but never enough to contemplate the idea of moving nearer to him.
11. I love my father very much despite that fact.
12. I'm a pretty picky eater, but not nearly as much as I used to be - when I was a child, I wouldn't eat anything green, not even green Smarties.
13. I was deeply unhappy at high school because I felt so invisible.
14. I have always been useless at every type of sport.
15. I would love to be better at sport.
16. Although I made most of my best friends at university, I was pretty miserable there, too, again because I was so invisible (to the opposite sex, I mean).
17. I fell hopelessly "in love" with a number of guys, all of whom at best were "friends" or at worst totally oblivious to my existence.
18. I spend most of my life being inhibited by this paralyzing shyness I've never really overcome, even though I now teach large classes of university students every now and then.
19. I'm not as unhappy as I probably sound. Really.
20. My eldest daughter died in July 2000 and my life has never really been the same since.