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= Katie Conley = From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

''"The reliable one" redirects here. For Auntie Katie, see Marina.''

Early Hours of Life
Katherine (Katie) Rubina Conley was born on July 30th, 1990 in Leicester General Hospital Maternity Ward. She was immediately referred to as "the little tinker" by the midwife, who had observed passing of meconium in the womb. It was a warm evening and Katie's father (Edward Clarke Conley) had stayed with her mother (Paula Annette Conley) throughout the night as the little tinker had refused to come out since mum's waters broke at 10PM the previous evening. Katie was born at approx. 5AM and it was noticed that unlike all other babies following birth, unusually kept her eyes wide open as if to say "Hello World". Photos were taken of the scene in small room where Katie was born. A few hours later, Edward left mum and baby to go back home for a sleep. Although very tired, Edward called into the University of Leicester laboratory where he worked on his way home. Everyone cheered when they heard the news of Katie's birth and celebrated with a cup of tea. When back home, Edward thanked Lynn Brammar, who had babysat for Katie's older sister Becky (Rebecca Elizabeth Conley) since 11PM the previous evening. It is said that just before having a short sleep (with Becky safely in the cot also sleeping) Edward took a yellow Post-it note and wrote the "Two Little Girls (1990)" poem. The eighteen months, twenty days referred to in the poem is the age difference between the two little girls: Two little girls

Both of them pearls

One of them came today.

The first one is nought

And the other one ought

to be eighteen months twenty days

Both of them are wonderful

Both of them are beautiful

In different kinds of ways

Early years
Within her first months, Katie came to be known by her sobriquet "KK" derived from Becky's pronunciation of "Katie". KK became her grandfather Ted's (Edward Anthony Conley, b. 1926) pet name for Katie on her visits to Liverpool. The Conley family lived at 38 Kingsmead Road in the medieval village of Knighton, now a suburb of Leicester. In her early years Katie advocated inclusiveness and was famous for saying "and I" in an assertive tone at the end of conversations with Becky. During 1993 Katie became the sweetest tiny tot, in the words of her father: "100% cuteness, nothing added, nothing taken away". She could typically be seen jumping around to "Band on the Run", saying "ladybirdy" and counting steps in Hatton Hill Park with a sweet, quiet, high voice. In 1994 (along with her elder sister) Katie was going to playgroup (playgroup, playgroup, playgroup) in Knighton Village Hall. The hall was part of the Knighton Church of St. Mary Magdalen, very close to where three famous residents Richard Attenborough, David Attenborough, and Gary Lineker grew up. Katie was an early adopter of non-violent protest, and to make her point she often resorted to the so-called "Food Fun" games, which were a bugger to clean up.

Primary Schools
In 1995 Katie began going to "proper school" - St. Thomas More Primary School in Knighton, Leicester. leaving her beloved Baby Beans Doll ("Beanie" 1990-) who now lives in a Liverpool cellar. Katie was brought to international attention in 1996 when through early social media a repetitive question on holiday made her known as the " is it sunshine now?" girl. Her father re-christened her "KC and the Sunshine Band" after the disco and funk group from the 1970s. This was also the period where Katie was fascinated by the dad story "Conley's Sun-on-a-String". Between 1996 to 1998 Katie was continually seen wearing her LFC shirt and bobble hat, a forerunner of her sports commentator role (see report "Welcome to this game in this thrilling league" from 2001 ). Towards the end of 1997, Katie sported wonderful Pigtails and was known as Leicester's own Pippi Longstocking. She and her sister Becky became Barbientrepenurs putting on fashion shows, appearing on TV (especially Blind Date) and controversially Ladybird Book Houses. Katie was an early advocate of electronic surveillance technology and famously prosecuted a cousin for brush theft. By 2009 Katie was showing traits of per, persistence, stamina and patience in her learning. When her father used to go out jogging (ha ha haaaa stoppit!) he would set both sisters times tables tasks, only to return to find Becky watching TV (with the book discarded) with Katie still learning hard. Katie always knew her times tables. Katie's reputation for diligence in learning was further enhanced with a remarkable random reading performance off teletext. She said on camera "I learned it in me brain" only to have doubt cast on that statement by her sister who sat there saying "no you didn't, Kate".

Being Baby Spice
Katie had a remarkable resemblance to Emma Bunton, a.k.a. "Baby Spice" in the popular British singing group "The Spice Girls". It started in a Liverpool children's disco in December 1997, when the DJ ran a Spice Girls competition for the kids. At the end of the dancing, the DJ announced to the whole hall "Well we all know who Baby Spice is!". Katie found it challenging to live with the sudden adulation, people pointing and saying "there's Baby Spice!" This effect was particularly troublesome on a visit to New York City in summer 1998. On that trip she was accompanied by her sister permanently wearing an LFC top, attracting additional calls of "and she's with Sporty Spice!". Both girls used the trip to see their idols at the Meadows Music Theatre (now the Xfinity Theatre), Hartford, Connecticut on 3rd July 1998. Video and stills survive the event, and should be in "The Archive ". These photos show Baby and Sporty Spice in their prime. The gig was part of the Spice Girls punishing 97-show tour Spiceworld. along with life in New Haven, Connecticut. After the concert, Scary Spice went past in a big limo, looked at Becky and Katie and shouted GIRL POWER! which was like a blessing for the two little mites. That summer, the family were staying in New Haven, (70 miles away from Hartford) by guest of the Professor of Neuroscience at Yale University, Professor Gordon Shepherd 1934-2022 (RIP). All this because Katie's dad wrote books on ion channels. Prof Shepherd's house in The Hamptons was the scene of chasing fireflies by two "fine English ladies" and that of the infamous "Daaaaaad! you've left mum without any money/bus stop incident". Yale in 1998 was notable in being almost entirely composed of Chinese students, who worked 24/7/365 and didn't communicate much. These are some of the people now running China's massive Science and Technology programmes. Back home, it was Blair's disastrous Public Finances Initiative, which built plenty of schools and hospitals but they were terrible deals for the public... and so we are still paying lots years later bloody country has gone to the dawgs! Katie had two notable concert's in Leicester's DeMontfort Hall, the first being the Bootleg Beatles, who were really quite good. Later that year, in an attempt to get some culture into the little mite's brains, dad took them to a University orchestral concert. Unfortunately, it went way past Kate's Bedtime and so her review of the concert was broadcast from the balcony to a deathly quiet audience below: "AH AHH AHHH I"M TIRED!" - the place erupted into laughter.

Growing Up in Wales
Contrary to popular opinion, Katies parents did not place here in a cult school society or rich kid city - not purposefully anyway. It was rural South Wales, chosen because of a Principal Scientist job and a jolly nice place to live, indeed the best place in Wales. Just think Paula, Becky and Katie running through open fields gathering daffodils, tending to horses and walking through forests and along lanes, yet only 20 min from an international capital, 15 min from an "international" airport and by the looks of it a decent school. DURRRR! Wake up parents. The two daughters thought that moving house was an affront but really it would not have been kind staying in Leicester, yeah Ok I would have been made a Prof. and we would have had untold riches, but hey I like big mortgages, OK? Cmon kids forgive us we were only trying to give you THE BEST and the best was not to be found in Let Edward In Cos Edward Sells Tired Edward Rubbers. Cardiff was really up and coming then, like the No1 UK City, getting the FA Cup Final like, whoa loved that, and LFC won it there ad I got some of the pitch! (forever the Michael Owen's Final - I mean scoring in the last minute like that! c'mon you missed it all in the play area of the Hare and Hounds, Aberthin. But it is available on YouTube, just look at that final goal - the whole pub went nuts, lots of LFC fans in Aberthin, even had an Anfield sign in the toilets - that's in the Archive too. Anyway that was the best moment of Michael Owen's career, he was so fast then, so skilled, but he went rubbish after that - too many little Sporties if you ask me. And after the match we went to the Bear in lovely summer sunshine met all the Arsenal fans coming back from the match, one Arsenal fan, moaning asked to borrow my pen - it was a super special Chrome NASA Space Bullet Pen it wrote upside down and under water! Anyway that Arsenal fan nicked it, still it was the only piece of silverware Arsenal took away from Cardiff that day I can tell you. Oh yes, what oh yes Katie's Wikipedia entry? Oh yes sorry, back to it.

Puddles and Cuddles
It was 2001, with 9/11 and all that a very strange time. It did feel like a new age was breaking, so many things were new, new job, new area, new house, new car - and then 9/11. It can't be underestimated what the shock of that day was. Katie's Mum and Dad went to Paris the day after and that was totally surreal because of the timing. Nan and Grandad who were looking after Becky and Katie had not heard the news all day as they had listened to only Country and Western tapes travelling down through Wales. By this time, nightly bedtime stories had stopped as they were pronounced "too uncool" by Becky (have you met Becky?) but Katie carried on listening to them nightly for at least two years by playing the tapes and was happily singing songs like "Old Devil Moon" to the full moon. The early 1990's saw some spectacular changes in technology, with improved broadband and the wider availability of mobil phones. We were still a couple of years away from the first Nokias, and Katie was instead occupied by being Avril Lavigne's biggest fan, ironically it was all pretty uncomplicated although Katie kept asking for us to "crash the mall" whatever that was. Katie struggled with her Welsh, but unlike Becky who referred to Wales as "a strip of land attached to England" Katie was very popular with her Welsh teachers. She had a bit part in the 2003 Epic "A Welsh Christmas Carol" where she played Tiny Tim's sad friend who she couldn't play hoop with anymore. As part of an elaborate game of "If you seek this little..." in Cowbridge, Katie's dad set out the sting operation to bring the two kittens soon to be known as Puddles and Cuddles to 9 Tair Onen (their house near Cowbridge). In reality the game was a ploy to allow a Cats in Crisis site inspection to take place (the actual pick up of the cats in Bridgend needed to be a surprise). Well it was a surprise, and there's film around of the cat discovery in the Bridgend Cinema car park. From that day forward Puddles and Cuddles would occupy most days. Puddles the 2nd was streetwise, fit and strong, Cuddles was a risk taker, weaker but very pretty. Probably died of getting herself into a bad situ. It was around this time that Katie was first prosecuted for fraud, by wantonly stealing the identity of a fellow bus passenger. Fraud became a life-long habit through her adoption of various non-Katie personas (e.g. mystery shopper, eBay shill bidder and "Katharine Hergarty" the impoverished teacher, see below). Essentially her technique was to look innocent like Dolly Dimples but being guilty as hell underneath (only kidding K8 ;-).

Financial Trubbles
In 2003, big bad greedy bar steward General Electric Corporation made a cash offer to buy the great British Company Amersham for 8 Billion squids. This aggressive act of violent global corporate asset stripping began with Greedy Emptiness making all of Amershamble's board members multi-millionaires and then asking the question "Gentlemen, are you with us? " - followed by all the Amershambles capitalist sharks saying "all our pay days have come at once and unlike Germany we sell one of our best high technology companies to the yanks, lose global marketplace on high tech products where we dominate, condemn all our grandchildren to working for foreign companies as parts assemblers and unlike Germany, sell our best traditional industries for a song, buy hey I get to pay my mortgage off early". Unknown to little children in their Welsh school idylls, theirs researcher Dads were subject to the humiliation of giving a talk directly to the CAAS of GE to keep his job. Daddy Edward chose his combined topic of "Physiological Drug Profiling" - his 2002 invention combining spontaneous electrically-active stem cells with artificial intelligence recognising drug effect fingerprints on ion channel activity. This impressed GE's Chief Scientist, the Lasker Award and Nobel Prize-Winning James Rothman that he offered Dr Conley a Research Director's position at GE Research hey, at $120,000 but its in the good ol' US of A. Not in plan for the little Welshies. Dr. Conley had to come home that night and explain to Katie, Becky and Paula the difficult situation. It was never going to work so they gave me a car, some dosh and we didn't have to relocate to PhD City in Niskayuna after all. This decision impacted the Conley family directly. They were on cash burn and explains whey the Conley children nearly were inhabitants of Bae Colwyn. Sorry about the last minute change and fake leaving parties Kate, it wasn't deliberate. At at the last minute. like two days away from losing the house Prof. Nick Avis of Cardiff University stepped in and offered a lifeline post in Cardiff School of Computer Science.

We only got four minutes
While not ideal the initial post gave a foothold back to an academic career and much needed income for the family. Katie's schoolwork came on in leaps and bounds. Teachers would grab us by the hand at parents evenings and say while drooling from the mouth "Oh Katie, Katie, she's wonderful, a lovely, lovely child" - well of course we knew that. Around this time we added to Puddles 2nd a lovely border collie dog Sammy. Sammy and Puddles thought on different wavelengths, they did not understand each other. Katie became rather timid of Sammy, especially when Sammy used to think he was coming on holiday with us, only to be going to holiday in Bridgend kennels. These were the years of Playstation 2 games like Virtual Springfield and FIFA World Cup 2002 played in Tair Onen's loft space, interestingly the seat of Katie's infamous "annoying judge" persona. The rural positioning of Tair Onen meant that a lot of the time Katie used Audi Taxis to ferry her to/from various Vale friends and to school, which only took 4 minutes. If it wasn't Madonna on, it could've been Kings of Leon, Linkin Park, Eminem (Ooops) Dave Bowie or the Beetles. Katie did get about bit, going on one epic tour to Berlin and losing her camera in the Jewish Museum. Like you do, her Dad went there the following week to pick it up from the front desk. Funnniee pictures of Katie on it! 2009 saw some very nice walks in the snow and in the local forests, it was really nice to have all that close by. In 2010 Katie started working in Tesco Cowbridge to fit in with her dad's drinking habits. Ah c'mon I only ever had one pint. All this time the Tair Onen garden was maturing and becoming greener as more money was spent on it. Katie even ventured out as an alien with her sister to take the bikes out if the shed, wash them down with a hosepipe and then go back to bed. mmm, strange. Katie was now near to being a fully paid up Archaeologist at Cardiff University and indeed discovered some Roman shoe thing at Caerleon. On her 21st birthday Katie looked lovely and we used the day to visit Llancarfan Church with her photographer friend Jess. Katie watched the hugely memorable 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony with her dad (and also the closing ceremony while Becky burned the house down). Dad and Kate also fitted in multi-series playbacks of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Hector's House and the Eisteddfod on S4C. 2013 brought huge "big snow" that Puddles and Sammy temporarily got lost in it. We were quite cosy in our oil-fired central heated home, something that we wouldn't be now. To complement her archeological activities, Katie and dad went forest orienteering one Saturday afternoon, armed with an ordnance survey map on a mobile phone. To their amazement they found the ruins of the 12th Century Llanquian Castle with some walls intact but massively overgrown. Its not something we thought we'd ever do, discover an ancient castle in your back yard.

Sack the sound girl
In 2014, Katie was pondering a teaching career because her first choice, a sound technician for her sister's TV company I will be known in the Industry as Rebecca failed so spectacularly. Even today, casual viewers can notice an atrocious drop in sound quality when that bloke gets interviewed. To be honest she was a bit of a fly by night and her fraudulent past came back when she accepted a role for "Katherine Hergarty" a fictional teacher and "aspiring home owner" invented by Becky Conley as a panic move because she didn't have enough people to film. In the finest British documentary filmmaker's tradition she just made it up! "Katie Hergarty" was convincingly played by Katie, and the film (Rural Roots) portrayed Katharine as an impoverished teacher subject to the tortured life of living in a £500,000 home in the countryside with all bills paid with frequent trips to Waitross and Costa Coffee for luxurious coffee and cake events. As Ms Hergarty was heard to say in the film "What kind of... life is that!". This was also the time of Clucky, the friendly rooster and the cats were in full crisis. Katie fulfilled her grandmothers vision of perfection by going to school in Cheltenham.

Horror in class
On leaving Cheltenham, Katie was heard to say (clutching a wine bottle) "its sooo hard, you don't know, it sooo haaaaard". Apparently Kate was drunk, as first spotted by becky BEFORE we went to the pub, still it wasn't as if she was like this all the time. It was the excuse for her misbehaviour when first teaching, however. After hammering it on an all night session, Katie reportedly played the opening themes of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds to her reception class and told them to get with the vibe This action left several little ones deeply traumatised, thinking the Martians were going to invade any minute. This complaint was little defence for her aberrant behaviour when first teaching. As reported in The Cheltenham Times the county council had to offer an unreserved apology for the so-called "Horror in class" incident. Katie escaped the anger of the press by taking a holiday to Ibiza with her family. Unfortunately she further embarrassed herself again in the spa by "singing" a rendition of the O'Jay's "Love Train" loudly to an unsuspecting audience. The family left the resort under cover of darkness. At age 25 Katie made a big move to Cardiff and was basically no longer entertaining us each day. So the years 2015 to 2022 go like blah Cathays blah Newport blah Carlos blah Zza-zaa - that's about it until a ghostly detached hand holding a wine glass visited her on a Wedding painting in Llangollen in July 2022. Oh and she had her 32nd birthday on the 30th, blimey thats today, I'd better send this.