My father was from Southampton and my mother Liverpool but the family ended up after the war in North London where my father had a marine engineering business and for many years we lived above the business in a little flat where I was born in 1950.

From an early age, trips to the centre of London opened up a world of enchantment with museums, ballet, theatre and a treat of a Wimpy or a knickerbocker glory, on half term holidays. Very young, I developed an interest in other cultures, periods of history, miniature anything, nature, books, art, music and a curiosity for novelty. At 11, I got into North London Collegiate School in Edgware, and I remember revelling in the discovery of a place that I had thought possible but hadn’t yet discovered where auto-didactic learning was encouraged and the pupils came from very varied backgrounds.

I studied Speech Therapy in London and worked initially in Reading where I spent half my week in an Audiology unit so learnt a great deal more about hearing and deafness. I knew that I wanted to travel and I needed finance to do this so I aimed for well-paying Canada as a place to work for a period of time with the idea of travelling on to Australia and repeating the process before coming home and getting settled. I needed a Masters Degree so I got that in London at Guys Medical School and succeeded in getting a post in Canada which was only possible taking a position no Canadian had been found to fill in 6 months.

I ended up in Kingston, Ontario in 1976. My hopes of leaving after a year were dashed when I was made Head of the Department and I stayed over two years in the Health Unit there, skiing in Mont Tremblant 400 miles away in Quebec at weekends, joining the sailing club and working as a bar maid at the Sailing part of the Summer Olympics in 1976. Canada is multi-cultural and encourages all to maintain their cultures and languages and recognizes a mosaic as opposed to the American melting pot. I loved being a person in my own right with no pre-conceptions. I saved to travel and finally left for my intended year but I applied to a Doctoral Program in New York to avoid the image of being a hippy on return from travel, which was the norm then. I was offered a position in the Montreal Children’s Hospital as I was setting out and negotiated a 9 month trip instead of a year and returned to Montreal, after travelling across the Middle East on a bus, being one of the last people to transit Iran and Afghanistan in 1978 in very dangerous circumstances, through to Australia and back through New Guinea and Singapore. I missed South America and the Galapagos, which remain losses to this day! In Montreal I wasn’t allowed to rest on my laurels as my Head of Department was concerned that I should do my Ph.D as planned and I went to New York for the residency part of my doctorate from 1980-1982 living in International House. Back in Montreal I became Head of the Department while still working on my Doctorate and this was a difficult balancing act but a fabulous experience. I finally got it in 1986. The Children’s Hospital was a fantastic place to work and Montreal one of the best cities of the world from so many perspectives that I loved my life there with series tickets to opera, ballet, concerts, hiking, biking and cross country ski club at weekends and the stimulus of many festivals in the year with free events mostly outside. Every year I had a trip back to meet my family here in the Lot et Garonne where I put down roots in the shape of an old ruin in Mazieres-Naresse in 1974.

In the 80’s I was asked to do some feasibility studies for Speech Language Pathology in Baffin Island the Arctic part of Canada immediately above us and served by the McGill Hospitals. I was also on the faculty at McGill. Working for health, I was solicited by the Baffin School Board to put in place some service and became the only person who was a consultant for two different services which was sometimes rather schizophrenic given their relationships. I left the Hospital reluctantly in 1994 when we had terrible budget cuts and restructuring that I could not tolerate and opened my own private practice from my home with the encouragement of many physicians who regretted the progressive lack of service at the Hospital for out-patients. During these years I increased my Consultancy in Baffin Island and was up north for 1-2 weeks every 6 or 7 weeks.

​My life took a different turn when I met my husband Willem here in France where he had just retired to my commune! Despite my love of my life-style in Montreal we were married in less than a year and we decided to move over here completely in 1999. I of course knew the area well from many years experience here but the shock of living full time and missing my work was quite dramatic and I hadn’t really thought through the issue of living without my own income. I was adjusting to many different things at the same time, country life, making friends as a couple, finding meaningful occupation. In reality it has given me a new range of friends and experiences including fresco painting, sculpture, singing in a choir, pottery and allowed me to write which has always been a background hum in my life. Renovating houses has also enabled me to discover talents I didn’t know I had and to garden a bit. I love reading, walking, yoga, language learning and travel and I adore as the rest of you, this beautiful landscape, light and history that we have in our part of France. I have had a play produced locally and written another one and am currently writing a novel and meet a group of international women on line for writing so I feel blessed with a life in three different places in three different times of life and am happy to share this period of it with the ladies of DLCI.