Anyone who has spoken to me knows I'm a Goeordie - an accent for life, despite the fact that I spent less than a third of my life in the North East of England. I left school at 16 with minimum qualifications as my main interests were social centred on live music.

My first employment was pricing prescriptions in Newcastle upon Tyne where I was required to sign the Official Secrets Act (?)! Boredom was the driving factor to change jobs. The accounts department of an insurance company was more interesting until Head Office introduced a computer. It was room sized and made it practically impossible to trace errors. My information was passed to Head Office (by post) and given to a team of computer operators, who punched holes in cards. Finally information from my office was fed into the huge machine. This process took more time and was more stressful for me than the previous regime. Was this the way I wanted to spend the rest of my working life (40 years)!

My parents has always wanted me to be a teacher. As a stroppy teenager, this was totally unacceptable to me. However, now that I was 20 and a little more mature, it became a possibility. With no regrets, I left office work and became a volunteer in a special school where I discovered I preferred people to paper.

A college in the Lake District accepted me as a mature student. I lived in Ambleside, where I met my first husband, who was a keen rock climber. Despite enjoying a hectic social life, I did find time to study and qualify.

My first teaching post was in Liverpool as it was well placed for travelling to the Lakes or North Wales each weekend for climbing. We enjoyed city life during the week until the birth of our eldest, when I became uneasy about bringing up a child there. This resulted in a job finding competition to see who would be first to gain employment in a suitable environment for raising children. I lost, but was happy to move to Knaresborough in North Yorkshire.

The following 20 years sped by, gaining further qualifications, more children, a dog and a change of husbands. Sadly teaching lost its allure when I was required to spend more time justifying what and how I was teaching rather than actually doing it !

France, where we had spent most of our holidays for years, beckoned. We arrived in 2004 to build our home on land we had bought 5 years previously. This was not a simple or easy process - a car crash left me hospitalised for 2 months and Jim's health began to deteriorate. Despite setbacks, we moved into our house in 2006 and had 10 years of living our dream even though Jim's health declined.

After his death in 2016, the house felt too large and I was worried about finances. The solution was to partition the house to make holiday accommodation. My sons made this venture possible.

Now, uncertainties (climate change, COVID, possible World War to name a few) make it difficult for everyone to make plans. I'm living for the moment on land Jim loved and in the home we built together. How lucky is that ?