more about me

Life didn't end in 2002, although it remained fairly quiet for a while. At the end of 2003 I was appointed as a lay preacher at All Hallows, North Greenford - the church where I was born and brought up - and I preached my first sermon in January 2004. More about that in the Sermons section of this site, if you're interested.

Later that year, I resigned from my job with the medical education charity in the hope of pursuing my dream of being a writer. My husband and I went to New Zealand with friends shortly after I finished work and when we came back I started a home study course in writing. However, the financial situation being less than rosy, I started looking for work again within a month of being at home.

In September we had a new addition to the household - Alex, a black cat from Battersea Dogs' and Cats' Home, Windsor. He was a traumatised animal, although there was nothing in the history they gave us to suggest why. He got out of the house by accident after only being home for about three weeks, went feral and attacked me when I attempted to retrieve him, then disappeared. We found out later that he was killed in a road traffic accident on the road behind ours, a lady saw it happen and took him to a vet where he died.

In October an ex-colleague from my previous job contacted me to say that his new employer, a NHS mental health care trust in north London, had an urgent vacancy for an administrator in a mental health hospital on a temporary contract - did I know anyone? Did I?! I started work in November.

At the same time I got in touch with a friend of a friend who had her own business through a company whose health and skincare products I used, to see if there was any work in it for me. In November I also went self-employed.

At Christmas 2004 we had two more new additions to the household - Arran and Lewis, kittens, named for the Scottish islands. We had them from a lady who responded to our missing cat poster - it wasn't our cat in her back garden but she did have two pregnant Burmese queens, both black so there was a good chance of getting black kittens if we wanted them. In the end we fell for a pure tabby and a tabby-with-white-belly. They are beautiful, and they know it!

My writing, disappointingly, failed to thrive, as did my business, but I got on really well in the mental health hospital and when that first contract came to an end I stayed on as a ward clerk. Then, in the summer of 2005, an internal vacancy arose for a Project Manager over at the headquarters site. I was excited and terrified - it could be a dream job or a nightmare. I went for it and got it. It was a national service improvement project and I successfully implemented electronic booking in the trust's outpatient clinic (with a little help from my friends, as the saying goes).

Around the same time this was going on, my husband was made redundant from his job in a large media company. He had contacts with a number of supplier companies, one of which was an IT company based in Swindon which offered him a contract. He started work in September.

By mid-2006 it became clear that the financial situation within the care trust would not allow them to renew my contract. Upsetting for me, because this really had been a dream job (although there had been some nightmare-ish moments!); upsetting for them, because there was no definite plan for taking the work forward. Luckily, I love nothing better than writing - okay, usually fiction (see the Fiction section of this site, if you're interested) - but a project plan needs creativity and imagination too - and I gave both in abundance!

I came close to getting two jobs in London but for one reason or another it didn't happen, so we went with Plan B - move to Swindon and make another new start. And that's where you find me in November 2006. New house, new church, new life. Watch this space...