I live in a two hundred year old malthouse built on a site that’s even older. No ghosts though – at least not yet. When they stopped producing malt for brewing, the building became a private girls’ school, then a billet for Canadian troops in World War Two prior to Dunkirk, and now a domestic home. So quite a history.
The Venice Atonement
I’m trying to learn Italian. Trying is the operative word – all those dratted pronouns. The dance classes I do are a lot easier!
My parents were married in Bombay (Mumbai). My mother had never been further than her own small part of London, but somehow found the courage to sail from Southampton on the three week journey to India. And at a time when she hadn’t seen her future husband for six years. That has to be love!
I don’t watch a great deal of TV but there are some series I love. Line of Duty is one and now my Sunday evenings are being brightened (not sure that’s the right word!) by The Handmaid’s Tale.
I travelled something like one and a quarter million miles around the world when I worked as cabin staff, in the days when aircrew spent three weeks on a trip to South America. Rio de Janeiro was my favourite city and I learnt to ride a horse for the first time – sort of – in the foothills of the Andes.
I haven’t eaten meat for thirty-five years. I was a true veggie for twenty of those but after I bought a small holiday home in France, if I didn’t eat fish occasionally, it was omelettes all the way.
I adore cats. Dogs are fine but cats are my passion and I hate to be without one, preferably two. At the moment, I have a British shorthair, lilac point, called Bluebell. Sadly, we lost her sister, Lily, two years ago.
I went to university as a mature student and ended up staying for nine years. It was hard work with a young family, but I loved it and it gave me a new career. Motto: never go for one degree when you can gain three.
As a very young girl I sailed out to Egypt on the Empire Windrush – we were an army family – and was really surprised when the ship began to appear in the news headlines a year or so ago. It was then I learned it had been destroyed by fire not many years after I sailed. I’m sure the ship wasn’t particularly comfortable, but such an exciting journey for a child. I planned to have my own camel when I got to Port Said!
I’ve done so many jobs that I’ve almost lost count: secretary, mother’s help, market researcher, retail supervisor and cabin crew. Then many years as a university tutor and educational adviser. And finally a writer – I kept the best to last!