X is for...

...erm...

Um, well now... Let's see...  No, there's no choice - I *may* have to cheat on this one...

x marks the spot: home

planes draw a saltire cross above DS's house in Scotland

So, yes, X...  The twenty-fourth letter of the Roman alphabet.  A tricky one... I have no broken bones to show off, I am not a player of any type of wooden tuned percussion, nor am I a carpenter bee, a Persian king from 500 B.C. or from a city in China.

I think I'll go with a combination of 'x marks the spot' and ex-pat.  Because I can.  (Or at least, because I shall...)  For me they do seem to fit hand in glove.  As a jobbing-travelling-singery type personage no longer living in the country of her birth, I do seem to live an 'x marks the spot' kind of life... Indeed, for a long time I had a map of the world on my wall and placed pins on all the cities I'd sung in.  To date this encompasses 17 countries from The United States of America to Japan.  The money can be crap, but boy, if you're lucky, you don't half get to see a lot of the world! 

 koi carp in tokyo, japan
 

Of course, a lot of that world is taken up with views from hotel rooms and the insides of concerts halls, but still...

beachside hotel in las palmas de gran canaria, spain

somewhere in new york, usa

market square in poznań, poland

trolley car ride in san francisco, usa

casa de mateus, portugal

thessaloniki opera house, greece

bilbao opera house, spain

... it could be a lot worse...