About me

I have always been a diarist. That is, until I recently moved house and discovered the dusty suitcases full of faded handwritten tomes in the loft. Hubby folded his arms. “And what are you going to do with all that?” He is very practical. And my rock of ages. But I cannot throw the observations of a lifetime away. So I have decided to move with the times and take up blogging.

I have had a number of different careers during my life which qualify me to bore other people with my senior wisdom. I started out at a Midlands Uni as an Archaeologist, until I discovered that I was more suited to reading about it than kneeling in a trench with a trowel for hours on end. I switched to an English degree, tried a bit of backstage undergraduate performance work, and wrote and performed a couple of “Pinteresque” short plays on local radio. I ended up with a second class degree and a job back home in Norfolk as a nanny in a minor country house. I got to travel a bit, met Hubby over a petrol pump, and we promised to love and honour, but not obey (he told the vicar that I wouldn’t obey him anyway). I tried my hand at writing locally, earned £10 for a story, and wrote a short report for Horse and Hound.

With marriage came a mortgage. I tried tele sales on commission, but realised this also was not my calling as I ended up with less at the end of the month than at the beginning. I tried arranging dried flowers (all the rage in the 80s). Then I went to college to learn to be a Personal Assistant. I learned to type on an electric typewriter, but shorthand defeated me. I got a job at The University of East Anglia, took messages for slightly dotty professors and typed exam papers. My son arrived, but money didn’t. Hubby was doing well and managing a farm. As a farmers daughter myself I embraced the life, but went to work part time at a Careers Office to help pay the bills. After months of filing, Hubby suggested I train to become a teacher. This was not a career I had ever aspired to, but so desperate was I to escape the filing cabinet that I enrolled on a Maths GCSE evening class (I only had a CSE – remember those?) and applied as a bit of a joke. At the interview I got into an argument with the tutor about teaching philosophy and left without hope. I got a place.

Thirty years later I am still suffering from imposter syndrome. I have laughed and cried with endless inspiring colleagues and delivered phonics to hundreds of hapless 6 year olds, before embarking on my career in Care of the elderly. This, sadly was a fairly short career, requiring new skills of resilience and kindness. My admiration for my friends and colleagues along the way has only increased as time has gone by.

So this is me. Deliberately unemployed and able to join Hubby in his seasonal work in New Zealand. What a lucky bean I am! My blog is the stuff I see and do.

Take it or leave it.