About me
I was born in Manchester, apparently near a park called "Boggart Hole Clough", well that's what my mother told me. She came from Chichester and said that Manchester was a smut-grey place in 1951, where everyone had to scrub the dirt from their front steps every week. They lived in one room and it must have been very hard to have a baby there. Apparently I cried all the time. My mother said I looked up at her with dislike, so she must have been unhappy!
Soon, my Dad got a research job in Cambridge where he had been to university, working on the very first computers and they bought a terraced house for £3000. I remember my hard, high iron bedstead and flowery wallpaper on which I drew around the petals with pen and got into trouble. Some hazy memories of Cambridge toddler life are helping the old lady living next door to put her wet washing through a massive contraption called a mangle. The sheets came out flat and I was scared that if I fell into it I might also come out flat. On the other side of our house lived a family with loads of children who, for some reason, I wasn't allowed to play with. I remember looking through the hedge and watching them play wishing I could join them. The milkman had a horse drawn cart, and one day I was allowed to sit up front and drive it!
When I was 3 we moved to a detached house in Walton on Thames, Surrey otherwise known as greenbelt commuterland. I had a happy childhood playing with all my friends in our road, which was an unmade muddy track with London-bound women walking up and down to the station in their high heels. We spent happy days making up plays and performing them to long-suffering parents, collecting dogs to "train" in the garden, making fires and cooking food stolen from our parent's larders over a fire in front of the old chicken shed which was my playhouse. Here my friends mothers seemed to be on took valium and their boring housewife lives were broken up by the excitement of the knife grinder, who had a nose that was spit in half by his grinding wheel, the grocery deliveries at the back door and the French onion man, who came on his bike and pinched their bottoms. We had fizzy Corona delivered to the door in crates that were a delightful shade of turquoise and pink. My brother Jeremy and I got on well but he was sent to boarding school at 7, so I only saw him during the school holidays and was very much an only child. We had a solid fuel boiler in the kitchen which had to be lit every morning and Jack Frost iced up the inside of the windows on winter mornings so I got dressed in the warmth of the airing cupboard. We swam from a beach in the largely unpoluted River Thames. I sang in the church choir and Dad's madrigal choir and at 14, went dancing at "Hersham Hop" to Tamla Motown with my friend Lindsay. Walton Park is now a main road leading to Hersham Station, full of cars. Whilst a teenager, I played guitar and sang in a group called "Dee, Pete and Viv" that mostly sang covers of Peter, Paul and Mary. We were successful enough to do a tour of Denmark school folk clubs and sing on national Danish radio.
I went to a posh girls school where I had to wear a red beret and grey felt hat in the winter and thick grey stockings with suspenders (!) and a straw panama and stripey dress in the summer. I was no good at Latin and was put into the German class. I wasn't good at that either so was demoted to the cookery O level class. I was a natural with music but struggled with the diet of classical. However I ended up with an A grade for Music A level and B for English and 9 O levels which got me into Redland Teachers Training College in Bristol. I was always overweight and was constantly on diets to get thin. They never worked. I sang with Alan, Pete and Danny in a folk group called "Bethams" and we did a fun summer season in McTavish's Kitchens in Fort William.
I met John, my first husband when I was 16 on the bus on my way to The Barge folk club in Kingston on Thames. We were soul mates for many years, parting for a while whilst I did my A levels and re-met in a church yard in Kingston and eventually married at 19. I made my wedding dress myself which cost only £4 in material. He joined me in Bristol studying electronic engineering and then we both went back to Leatherhead in Surrey where we bought our first house for £8,000 and I taught in a primary school. After several miscarriages Ben was born. As soon as we could we moved back to the Bristol area, where we first bought a large maisonette in Weston Super Mare, up the hill near Grove Park with a great view of the sea. In Weston hospital Joe was born — very easily and then I nearly died giving birth to Amy with an emergency caesarian after a hemmorrhage caused by the doctor mistakingly cutting the main artery. The flat was so big the boys rode their trikes around on the amazingly thick carpet that used to belong to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It was a shock being a mother of these three lovely little blondies in just over 4 years and sometimes I saw my reflection in shop windows — a pale tired bedraggled woman — pushing a triple buggy along and couldn't believe that this had happened to me. I needed all the help I could get and my mum and mother in law came to stay when I had the babies and Auntie Mary came to visit often as she travelled around the country with her job with the RNIB. I still kept up my music, which was a necessary life-saver, and played as a duo with my friend Pete from "Bethams" and another duo with Jenny.
The thirty steps up to the front door and the lack of other young mums with kids drove us to find a more suitable house for a family. With some financial help from the family, we moved to a practical 1960s house in Winscombe on the foothills of the Mendip hills. A safe cul-de-sac near both playgroup and primary school with a level garden and plenty of children around for our kids to play with. Here John and I struggled to make ends meet and I worked in a mushroom farm at weekends and then as a literacy tutor in the evenings. I joined Allen and Paul in a band called "Meridian" which had some success around the local folk clubs and later joined Martin Hanstead and Stefan Hannigan forming a multi-instrumental folk band called "Orion". Martin and I became a duo and toured the folk clubs in England and Wales, releasing a few cassettes and LP "Jack Orion"
I bought my own house in Narroways Road, St Werburghs, Bristol when Amy was 12. Gradually over the years as the kids left home to go to university, I spent more time in Bristol and less time in Winscombe. John and I divorced and I had a bit of a wild time — a reaction after being a mother of three. I continued to sing as a duo with Martin as "Orion" and with acapella group "The Sweet Soul Sisters" . Later, I formed Gasworks Choir with Ali Orbaum and semi-pro acappella group Naked Voices.
To support myself, I worked for thirteen years as an adult literacy and computer tutor in Hartcliffe and The Open Learning Centre in St Pauls. Amy moved to Bristol and after living in Easton for a bit moved into the next door house where the rent was incredibly low and stayed for 11 years until she married Mark and went to live in a truck in the Forest of Dean.
Ben moved to London to do his MSc and got a job as a technician and lecturer at Uxbridge University and then through Naked Voices, met his partner Jo, moved in with her in Stroud and had my eldest granddaughter Saskia, who is a delight and has grown up and gone to Falmouth Uni to study illustration.
Joe came home from Manchester Uni to stay temporarily in "The Cupboard" a low-ceilinged storage room in the roof space. He was there for three years rent free but when he did his MA at Bath a room became free and I thought he should have a room to study in. He moved out for a bit with various girlfriends but returned and I enjoyed his company here. He now has a little boy and lives in Montpelier after breaking up with Felix's mother. He then studied for a second MA in Psychology.
Amy and Mark have a company that hires marquees called Stretch Event. Amy also did an MA in Music Therapy and they now live in a lovely house in the forest with a massive garden and their 2 gorgeous artistic and musical daughters, Amber and Kira.
In 1997 I met Scott and he moved in with me and a couple of years later we had an amazing partly pagan, partly buddhist wedding with bagpipes, accordions, citars, guitars, dancing, poetry, theatre and singing. He is blind but having grown up with blind people in my life, through my Auntie Mary, it didn't daunt me. We lived happily together for 17 years until he fell in love with a volunteer from his work. This young girl, the same age as my youngest child, is also blind and a Muslim from Pakistan. He left me for her, converted to Islam and was divorced and married to her within a year. This left me somewhat shell-shocked and alone. This is the burden that many women over 60 must bear but it is a hard one. Sadly, she has not allowed him to continue to be friends with me or my children. I am now with Max, who has his own house and we live semi-independently but enjoy going out and staying in together. His wife of 35 years died and I had known him 25 years as he helped build my loft and extend my studio with our friend Henry, who has since also died. Unfortunately, Max's family does not acknowledge my existence and although he is a part of my family, I am not welcome to meet his children or grandchildren... even after nearly a decade!
I like people around me and there have been many people living at Narroways Road, in our house. Charlie, Ian, Mike, Patrick, Neil, Lorenzo, Matt, Mark, Phil, Nick, Hugh, Mikki, Phoebe, Paul, Matt2, Giorgio, Keith, Joe, Bekki, Roger, Kayle, Leye, Sam, Rosie, Liam, Alice, Sarah and Freya have all lived here. I love sharing my life, being involved in other people's lives and living communally — all helping and supporting one another through sickness and wellness, heartache and happy times. Now I share my house with lodger Liam, who has returned to do a masters in double bass and classical composition and we live very comfortably and harmoniously. I have bought No. 26 and No. 24 and we are good friends and neighbours to each other.
Narroways Road is a cul de sac and is near many green spaces where we can walk the dogs. One year we had a great street party and our neighbourhood is a friendly one. When my friend Reni up the road died, her funeral wake was held in the studio and the community came together to grieve and to celebrate her life. Now we have a great WhatApp group, keeping us in touch with each other constantly.
I still run Gasworks Singers, a small group derived mainly from Gasworks Choir members and teach a bit at singing camps and holidays. I have recently taken up the violin to replace my grown-old voice and I play in the Fantasy Orchestra, Danish music in string group and Swedish folk music with Bristol Spelmenslag. The Gasworks Studio is attached to my house and this is still where the choirs, my dancing group, string group and other groups meet.