Sorted!

Unbelievable... How can some people be so obliviously drifting in cloud Cuckoo Land all the time? I have had my share of working with some pretty difficult characters but some people really do get some sadistic pleasure in making others lives more challenging. Now, I cherish the people I work with dearly (well most of them), but sometimes I would love nothing more than to really go for it in a super style hit and run screaming rage just to say my piece – minus the inhibitions, minus any senior people within earshot and with immunity from being expelled! Instead I desperately try to contain myself and for my efforts wind up with a fat ‘Jamie Oliver’ style tongue, due to the biting it gets - AAAHHHH!!

How can you honestly look around you and visibly see people struggle and stress with a massive mountain of ‘stuff’ and sit there staring blankly into space with no cares in the world? I find myself in absolute hysterics for most of the day in the belief that as long as I keep laughing I can avoid crumbling in the corner like a nervous wreck! I am so thankful I have a great team to keep me going, but honestly I just find it absolutely hilarious how people really can’t (can’t / won’t – controversial) see beyond a foot in front of them. I hate to draw such generalisations when in the midst of all that there are some really wonderful peeps, but come on, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL YOU PEOPLE?

When you walk down the street and someone collapses right in front of you, would you calmly step right over them thinking how inconsiderate that you now have to lift your legs higher? No. Would you assist a little screaming kid that had fallen over because his legs couldn’t move as fast as he thought they could in his head? Of course you would. So why the hell can’t you naturally offer to help in exchange for some precious minutes of your ‘contemplation’ time?!!!! Mental!

I tell you what though, if there is one major lesson I've learnt it is how to rapidly expand my vocabulary to a hundred different ways to say no! I'm keeping these for the future!

Having gone from bad situation to worse situation (oddly through no real fault of my own), I am now finally in a job I think I could enjoy longer term and a company I could stay at for long enough to warm my chair! Having gone through a whole day of psychometric and preference assessment, I have come to officially realise through true hard-core facts that I am absolutely nothing like my colleagues and share pretty much no common traits or similarities! Ordinarily if you were looking for a relationship you might say that opposites attract, however in a working environment this has highlighted which buttons I need to push to really p*** someone off (good to know!) and exactly who to avoid on one of those days.

What it has also made completely clear to me is that if I ever need to focus, have a bit of quiet time in order to plan, use data, think logically or be able to reflect occasionally, I may as well forget it. I would get more quiet time in the midst of an Iron Maiden concert and more co-operation in advance of a deadline from a bunch of Greyhounds clocking a rabbit than I would at work!

The one thing I have always found with colleagues everywhere I have worked, is just how much they all seem to love to talk – a lot, and not about anything really in particular – just a whole bunch of words and whole lot of voice. Clearly from this statement it isn’t something I do often – talk a lot I mean. Of course I talk, but most people I find can’t be arsed to truly listen anyway, I figure it will save me so much more energy if I just didn’t bother in the first place! Sounds negative you might think, but actually it’s part of who I am and part of who other people are. There are exceptions of course… Everyone else just seems to feel so much more passionate about what they have to say for themselves than anything I would ever want to say, so I just leave them to get on with it and instead have important conversations in my head with my ‘advisors’. According to my preference this should be perfectly normal to me, though could be seen as slightly schizo to others when these voices are silently talking to me all the time! Whether my imaginary friends as a wee lass were attributed to my preference, the fact I was an only child or even some paranormal experiences, I can’t be 100% sure.

Everyone else’s life (in their eyes obviously) is so much more important than mine that I just haven’t felt the burning desire to really tell anyone anything about me. Actually not just about me, but just anything really, I am pretty private. But, that truly isn’t because I don’t want to talk or I don’t want people to get to know me, I just don't always know how to - I am competing against people who are far more willing to open up than I am (probably on more than one level actually!), so I don't stand a chance. I would love people to know me better – I am a misunderstood genius after all and could occasionally contribute. If they wanted to know anything about me that bad though, I figure they would ask – plenty of opportunity as I am practically a mute anyway! This is the closest I have and probably ever will come to talking about small and insignificant things in my little life to anyone other than my selection of really close friends, not just the ones in my head – so yeah, you are totally honoured.

(Disclaimer – none of the information contained within this blog can ever be used against me…)

Contending with insomnia and working in a job and a place you love but for an incredibly unprofessional boss, is not the healthiest situation for anyone to be in. I have a great boss now that makes me laugh, though admittedly I don't think she means to, she's just absolutely mad! But I have had to deal with a boss from hell previously. For the sake of progressing my career and learning enough to start my own business if I ever wanted, I had to put up with some pretty horrific behaviour towards me - bullying, sexual harassment and general all round idiocy actually. Don't think he ever really understood the boundaries between employer and employees and crossed them a little too often. I let it go for a while knowing that I would make good of the situation in the end, but it became too much and I had to put a stop to it. I had to become stronger at dealing with it. I was not going to be indirectly forced to leave before I was ready to - the biggest enjoyment in working for a boss you hate being near is handing your notice in isn't it - he wasn't gonna take that away from me!

I was confident with my knowledge and experience, I know I can do anything if I really want to, I have proven that to myself hundreds of times. I was incredibly low in self-esteem, bullied to the point of believing maybe I was actually a failure. I now just needed to ensure that the knowledge I took with me would be transferable so I got everything I needed (including a fail safe plan for revenge!) and built myself and my boss up for a 'quiet' drink and chat in the pub after work. Any chance to be alone with me he was pretty up for, so I got him to unexpectedly walk straight into my resignation!

I loved and have cherished every moment of that evening in his favourite place in the world! To see a rather (over) grown man cry in public, that the business couldn't go on without me blah blah blah, he then decided to declare his love for me and offer to whisk me away for marriage. WHAT - that's a pathetic plea for help if ever I heard one! He would literally do anything to change my my mind - it was an absolute result. I was now the one with the power, not him and he hated it. That was the moment I had been waiting for, it was the first chance I had since the horrible stalker incident to make my point 100% clear.

I took so much strength from this situation and whilst my soul was stripped bare from bullying, my nerves were on edge and I lost all self confidence, inside I knew I could pick myself up again. I did once before. I have learnt a lot from many of the experiences I have had, one thing that has become certainly very clear is that there is such thing as Karma. What goes around most certainly comes around; he will get what he deserves… it is all beginning to unfold!

Waiting to start my grad role after uni and spending the summer of my final year at Uni dossing about, it started to take it’s toll on my sleep patterns. Well, I didn’t sleep and still don't. I spent most nights on chat rooms whilst the drone of the snores were coming from that man in my bed! Turning the light off to try and get to sleep would bring up images of the stalker from school days and the weird freaks I met on the chat rooms, so sleeping with the light on became a regular feature. Distinguishing between night and day was then made a little harder with my complex over imaginative and over active mind. My fascination with reading numerous books on forensics and the ins and outs of the worlds most gruesome serial killers may not have helped my case.

10 years of insomnia and 10 years of Doctor support and this is my summary: tranquilisers don’t touch it, herbal remedies you may as well not bother, sex doesn’t work and oddly enough watching Tony Blair hasn’t worked either - nor does tha help the sex so best to avoid him altogether actually!! The only solace I get is taking a very high dose of what are already strong sleeping pills. These will knock me out, but for an hour before they work, I allegedly go a bit crazy – strange you may think as I seem perfectly normal!! I vaguely remember bits of the craziness the day after, but not to the level of detail I am later told. They completely knock my muscles out, I lose control of being able to walk normally and feel like a tonne weight. Whilst laying flat (because I can’t physically move) I believe that I am falling, I try chasing chickens around the house, which is a little dangerous with the stairs and I have also had an abnormal fear of oranges and anything orange coloured must be thrown out of the window or people will die! I know I am a little odd, but this could alter anyone’s opinion of me, or confirm it!

Not sleeping much, having 5 cats and a husband that sleeps instantly the second he is in bed does get to me. I am constantly tired, incredibly frustrated (especially with the bed thing) and I swear the cats can sense my irritation and p*** me off some more by scratching, implanting dirty footprints on the white sheets and fighting extremely loudly like a herd of elephants running up and down the stairs. I am well placed to be up with a screaming child all night, I am used to the lack of the sleep and clearing up vomit and excrement almost every day. From the stories I have heard on children lately I don’t think it would be too much of a dramatic change!!

Coming up to graduation, I toyed with the idea of a graduate scheme in Human Resources for a rather large motor company, who shall remain nameless – and pretty penniless too as it happens. I then changed my mind and thought HR was a stupid career choice for a Scientist and a certain waste of my parents money in my education (little did I know the turn my career would later have). I opted instead to take up an Engineering role. I decided that too was a stupid idea as it was too far to travel and meant parting with ‘the other half!’ That plan fell on its head and I was back to square one. What do I do?

To follow my degree as a Geologist with the British Geolological Society it would mean moving up north. I couldn’t travel 50 miles round the M25, I certainly wasn’t prepared to relocate and there wasn’t much geology to study in London. Realising that my dream to work in forensics wouldn’t fund the lifestyle of an ant, it wasn’t realistic despite being well qualified to do it and pretty knowledgeable with the subject having been a fascination of mine since the age zero. See what sacrifices I had to make for the man of my life – that sensitive kind poor man that took pity on me, and married me…

Having spoken to some awful and unprofessional recruitment agencies to talk about graduate placements, in a weird turn of events and something which in my experience did not happen very often, I spoke to one particular agent who owned her own business. She was very professional, successful, hard working, knowledgeable about her subject and was actually helpful. After a few hours of conversations I became interested in the role that she did. Yep, I was going to become one of ‘them’. Other than estate agents, possibly the most detested of industries in the UK - recruitment.

Still to this day I am not 100% sure what attracted me to recruitment, it isn’t the most pleasant of roles to have to do a lot of the time, but with a blood sucking final year student living with me in a flat we rented together, someone had to fund his continued alcoholic student lifestyle and I was damned if I was going to put myself out for him too much with relocating and all! I followed the pound signs and into an IT Recruitment agency. At least IT was technical, a bit of a challenge I told myself, even if it is totally irrelevant to the degree I studied!

Following another fluky pass of my exams and fluky entrance interview to University, I managed to get the grades needed to be offered one of 20 places onto the best course ever – Earth Sciences. OK, so I did end up going down the Science route I detested as a 3 year old. My dream was to work in the police as a Forensic Scientist and still is, but can’t get everything I want I guess. I settled for the man rather than the career of my dreams. When I win the lottery, perhaps I will re-evaluate?!

So University, what a great time, remember it like it was yesterday; well I remember bits of it anyway! I met my husband during Freshers week, we were in the same halls. He came from Gloucestershire, had a pretty thick accent at the time and my God did he look like a farmer! His jeans had been washed so many times they were almost translucent and the shirts came straight out of the set of Worzel Gummage. From this description it is pretty easy to imagine that there wasn’t an instant attraction taking place. Anyway I became close friends with another girl on my course, she got transferred to the same halls and University life started in full force.

Toward the end of the first month of Uni I was told that I would marry that ‘farmer’. ‘WHAT – are you kidding me, I don’t even know him, what does he think he looks like – not in a million years!!’ Anyway a few weeks later (after getting to know him a little more on a few drunken nights out and an incident with Gin) we started to see each other very casually which then became a bit more of a regular fixture. During this time I had also taken up ten-pin bowling for a bit of a p*** about on a Wednesday afternoon – the only sport I was aware of that meant you could consume alcohol and still have a good game. I met some really nice PhD students, got drunk a lot, made consistent use of the teams ‘chunder truck’ which was as it sounds, got voted to be Ladies Team Captain won some pretty big trophies (they got much bigger by the end of each tournament!) and was surprisingly presented with Club Colours at the Sports Society annual awards ball – how on Earth?! The 1st year of Uni was messy and I could sense was going to get a little messier from there on…

Without going into too much detail, I was a typical 1st year student. I laughed a lot, stayed in bed a lot, liked men a lot (not the greatest of girlfriends at the time), responded to bootie calls, drank too much and loved spending the huge allowance Mummy and Daddy gave me every month - I basically didn’t take Uni very seriously. I figured I got through A-Levels alright and the 1st year of Uni is pretty much repeating that, so I thought I didn’t need to worry too much about it until I found out that it counted for 20% toward the final grade – gulp!! Oh well, life’s too short, I got into Uni didn’t I?!!

The 2nd year

Realising that the bed of roses of the 1st year, and the cushioning of halls wasn’t going to support me any longer, I moved into a lovely flat in the really cheap place in Buckinghamshire where all Uxbridge students slog it in nasty cheap digs, not. I moved to Denham Green! I got a flat with my friend, bought and paid for by our parents, I got a car and decided to try and knuckle down for the first time in my life to show my parents that their hard earned money wasn’t just supporting the local brewery, but was going to get me places. Hmmm.

After having a particularly horrible short lived relationship with what I can only describe as a psychopathic, needy, weird penis man over the holiday period (not the person I married just to get that one straight). I decided I had to get someone more normal and get back on track with that guy from Freshers week who I regrettably referred to as the ‘peasant’ for months due to the look and the letches he hung around with that seemed to have been dragged up, not brought up.

If I see something I want, I will get it. It may take time, it may take heart ache, but I will have it – I have the most immense determination if I really want to achieve something. Despite the farmer look and the unintelligent sounding accent, I could see room for improvement – he had potential, he had a nice arse and he had the body tone, he just needed a bit of pruning!

Final year

The last 2 years of Uni were hard. I wanted to be with my boyfriend and have a great time, I didn’t want to have my head in books. After a slight lapse in the quality of my work I had to pull my socks up. By this point my parents had spent thousands of pounds on me in living costs, mortgage, books, car and mobile (and of course an entertainment allowance!). I wasn’t the rat bag of my childhood any more and I couldn’t let them down. I had found myself a nice man and I had to come out with a 2:1, I owed them that much. If I could avoid pregnancy and arrest I would be onto a winner, I was sure of it!

The 3rd year was tough, I spent most of my weekends back at my parents, not just to get my clothes washed obviously, but to work. I really did work incredibly hard. My boyfriend was doing a placement for the Home Office working on some prison stats or something...zzzzzz. Though actually the main stories I heard were about playing ruler cricket and minesweeper, but he was being paid and having a laugh so I guess that was OK. After all, he had another year to do following the placement whereas I was being released into the wild for the first time in my life! I had no idea where I was going with my future career. After 3 months locked in a science lab glued to a microscope counting and analysing hundreds of f***ing pollen grains from a soil core to establish trends and time periods, I knew that there had to be a role out there that gave me some human interaction…? There was certainly more to life.

Despite the fact that I am a lazy cow now and will avoid walking if I can drive, at school I was a little fitter and would walk everywhere. I was slightly more toned then, who am I kidding, a lot more toned than I am now and everything was in almost the right place. Walking to and from school 10 years ago was still quite a pleasant thing to do, but ended up not helping my case for combating my fear of the dark. I had a stalker. It went on for over a year with daily torment and absolute torture wondering where he will be or what he will try and do to me. I didn’t have a mobile back then - our school was so strict you couldn’t wear a coat without it going through 6 approval processes for it’s colour and length, a mobile phone would have been damn right outrageous and certainly a case for suspension.

I remember the first day this man ‘struck’. He stopped me on my way home with his shitty mountain bike by blocking my path trying to grab me. I just about managed to nip past carrying my heavy bag of text books as my locker was full of crap and also holding an A3 Art folder which made manoeuvring awkward to say the least. I got past and I ran home as quickly as I could, only to realise he was still following. 12 d-tours later and 30 minutes late home, I finally got in the door to an angry mother thinking I had been bonking behind the bike sheds and a father fuming at the fact he had been looking around for me rather than pissing about on that God damn computer. When I was finally able to cry and snivel the words of what had just happened my dad grabbed a crow bar and off he went. The fear of God was officially planted in me and once again my life would take a slightly different slant.

Every day following this incident for the next year would feel like an eternity. Walking home from school became a mammoth task of rubber necking the roadsides, gingerly walking up to corners and avoiding shadows and unlit areas. Mum had friends meet me on the way, dad would leave work early to follow me home in his car in the hope he can catch the stalker red handed to ‘show him what happens to anyone who dares touch a hair on his daughters head’. Mum had to tell the school what was happening so they could stagger the times I left to avoid the stalker catching onto a routine. It was the most nightmarish hell I have ever been through.

More incidents happened over the stalking period until one day I left school at lunch – it wasn’t truancy on this occasion, at least I don’t think it was, but I saw the ‘I’m so hard, thinks I’m so sexy’ stalker with his 2, yep 2 young children walking towards me to get to the shop!!! I was absolutely gob smacked, not only that he could be so cruel as to make another human being feel so low and intimidated, but that he had the nerve to do it under the nose of 2 innocent children at home. Well this was my one opportunity to have the upper hand whilst he was powerless to do or say anything. He hung his head low, avoided my eye contact and looked thoroughly caught out. I said my silent obscenities and burnt holes in his head. I consider myself to have had a very lucky escape actually, it could have got much worse. He never came back.

I could never have really estimated the impact that awful year would have on me. To this day I hate going anywhere alone, I refuse to be alone in the dark and I most certainly will not walk anywhere alone in the dark. My relationship with men was not quite as carefree and crazy as it used to be. Rather than chasing the risky, crazy bad boys I loved, I began seeking the quiet ones, those that would be more sensitive, in touch with their feminine side (though not too much, had a bad experience with that one!) and who would love me, dote on me, be sensitive and cater for my every need. Been pretty lucky in this one too!

I remember working my arse off when I was 10 and 11 because Mum and Dad wanted me to get into the best school around. This meant that once again not only was Science, Maths and English drummed into me, but it also meant tests. Yep, my parents were those evil type that put their kids through the paces in the hope they have a better life or better qualifications than they did. As the only child I got all their attention, all their focus, all their frustration and all their moaning. I was to get into that school no matter what, otherwise I was really in for it. To get in I had to do lots of tests, work like a trooper and my reward would be a great entrance exam to determine whether I would be in the upper or lower band at this marvellous institution I would spend the next hell bound 7 years of my life at. As it turned out I got in the upper band and made Mummy and Daddy very proud that their daughter is the only one in the neighbourhood to get in. How great for them. How bloody marvellous. What an achievement, didn’t they do well.

I was going to make the most of my new school even if none of my friends were going, but going to the open day prior to the start was a little more uncomfortable than anticipated having been rushed into hospital 2 weeks before to have my appendix out minutes before they burst. I was bent over something chronic looking incredibly wilted, rough and feeble. For any teachers on the lookout for their star pupil with fabulous posture and great promise, I don’t think I would have been top of the hit list and certainly would have failed my parents on that particular occasion.

Growing up to me meant getting out; getting out of home as often as possible! I had my share of boyfriends in starting a new school and into the early teens it became a little more ‘serious’. Teens are not great for anyone, when you are the child of a loving parent I guess for most people it can feel a little claustrophobic. I remember being caught so many times by my parents (and my parent’s spies) with boys in the bushes or hiding in the tall grass hoping no-one sees. At the time it seemed very discreet but looking back, not sure how we could have been so stupid! I went out with a couple of friends and my boyfriend to a local park, shouldn’t have really been where we were, but you live and learn. I have what is a classic embarrassing dad situation and that mixed with a friend’s worried over-bearing mother meant that I was caught in a rather compromising position… needless to say I split up with my boyfriend fairly shortly after! From that point on I was determined that my parents get right out of my business and get a life of their own. That didn’t go down too well, they cut my allowance and my threat to run away was completely ignored. I was back to trying to get in their good books as the innocent, goodie two shoes they always believed me to be and that still lives on today. What they don’t know won’t hurt!

It then got to GCSE time, and GCSE’s weren’t great for me. I didn’t work hard as I wasn’t particularly bothered. I hadn’t thought about going to Uni as my parents didn’t go and gratefully didn’t push me into the idea. At 16 as with most other 16 year olds I knew everything there was to know anyway so I really didn’t see the point. I went into the exams like doing the 7+ and what happens happens. My parents desperately wanted to change my attitude to this, so what a better way to do it than to bribe me with lots of cash! I made a deal with mum a month before the exams that it would be a miracle if I achieved anything at a C let alone anything more. She (stupidly) agreed to trust me and said that she would pay me £100 per subject for anything at a C and more for anything above. She was just as convinced as me that ‘with an attitude like that I was going nowhere’ so she wouldn’t have to pay me much. The results came back whilst holidaying in Majorca and much to mum’s and my amazement, there was a shear under-estimation of my abilities and she ended up skint! Safe in the knowledge I knew I could actually do something reasonably well and perhaps with a tiny bit of effort I might even do alright in the future, I thought I could try and better myself with an education!

I got the grades needed to be successfully offered a place in my school’s sixth form. To be fair it was either that or hang out with the chavs at the local college who after 3 repeated years were still trying to pass their basic English GCSE exams in the hope of having their application form accepted into McDonalds. So I stayed at school and did my A-Levels. Bit tougher than I thought. I managed to get through GCSE’s with minimal effort and a little bribery; I thought A-Levels would be the same. Yep, slightly mistaken and as a result I had to work. Actually hit me pretty hard, I wasn't used to it and I noticed the boys becoming men instead of the wenches I was used to dating. Keeping focused required some serious self disciline which I didn't have. But a set back did come along when I managed to get myself a real life stalker - that only happens in movies doesn't it?

As an only child I was often left to the mercy of my parents for entertainment, which not only didn’t impress me but was certainly made pretty clear that it didn’t impress them much either. Rather than dad now shoving science down my throat or mum teaching me to spell ridiculously long words or learn my 12 times table by the age of 4, I now had to contend with the fact that I had lost my indoor play mates to Dad's new computer. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I had lost the attention to another human being but instead it was to this hideous monstrosity now sitting in the corner (no I don’t mean dad, but this stupid computer). My choices were now limited to viewing the back of dad’s head or being collared into helping mum in the kitchen as she was just as sick as I was having to stare at him on the computer all day. What a choice, I had to find a way out...

The new wonderful computer that would bring us well and truly into the 20th century, for me, spelt trouble – it was going to assist my education... Well that was how Mum was convinced to allow Dad to get one anyway. Looking back I think my parents seriously lacked the ability to just let me be a kid sometimes. They tried very hard to get me to learn lots of things, but rather than play fun games on the computer, I actually found myself having to play games of logic, puzzle sliders and really exciting things like that, which lead me to believe I was in serious danger of going down the geek route just like Dad. Why couldn’t I be more like my crazy, outgoing fun loving mum? She has no shame, she’s just Mum. She is so chilled, so strong and incredibly funny, though not entirely out of choice as dad and I have spent years laughing at her not with her. A little bit of participation in Dad’s chemistry experiments and computer programming wouldn’t have done her any harm! The annual Christmas trivia games only go to prove that fact!

Bless her though, Mum did start to work part-time when I went to school and qualified as a hygienist which I think is testament to the chronic hand washing OCD I suffered as a child, in fact not quite completely got over yet! A child that can’t play with the ‘very thoughtful brightly coloured magic sand that Nan and Granddad brought over’ because of the shear fear of getting dirty hands is not much fun. Trying to explain that to grandparents without it coming over as sign of a very spoilt only child (which they constantly reminded me of) is not particularly pleasant. It got worse when they kissed me goodbye and I had to spend the rest of the evening scrubbing my face because of the ‘dirt’ and ‘particles’ that they left behind!

Being an only child also meant that I had to see my Grandparents without fail every Sunday, with no one to play with. It was totally traditional and they took massive offence to it if I didn’t want to watch the crap black and white film or Bullseye and instead, God forbid, I wanted to have fun with my friends at their house for an afternoon before I am stuck at school again. The Sunday ritual as I got older became a real tie actually. As much as I loved my Grandparents a whole afternoon with them was enough to drive anyone insane. Granddad was going deaf and after mum found out that I hadn’t completed my homework on the previous Friday I was in my room listening to the booming TV because (due to the deafness) it echoed through the walls and took what should have been an hours work nearly 3 hours to complete. This happened frequently and meant that I was spending what could be quality time with friends stuck in my room with my head in a mound of books – which quite frankly was as appealing then as it was at Uni. At least if you have a sibling you can divert some of the attention away from you and maybe stir a bit of trouble for some fun. But no, as it was just me, everything was about me. Me, me, me.

OK so my childhood, from what I recall, was great – I was always out playing with friends, I had a very happy home life, I got on well with my parents, I ran around like a lunatic, I bashed my knees in so bad they look like a patch work quilt, I hung (and fell) from trees, I was fearless, confident and somewhat advanced for my years…. So what happened?

My parents left schooling pretty early on. My mum, a true hedonistic Eastender, got home one day to find her clothes in black bags outside with a note telling her not to come back as she wasn’t welcome. On the outside she lived as part of a traditional happy Jewish family, but inside closed doors she suffered years of terrible physical and mental abuse at the hands of her own mother. She was one of 5 children and the main carer of her younger brother who had Polio. It really wasn’t a surprising end to her life in the parental home and a subsequent end to her schooling having to work 20 hours a day in 3 jobs, just to survive. My dad, the ultimate mummy’s boy and an only child, never really quite left home, but left school to be a MAN and bring money into the house. I know certainly from my mum’s awful childhood and the lack of opportunity that both my parents had as children growing up in London, it was always going to have a big impact on what they had in store for when they had children of their own…

I was born, well actually untwisted, freed, pulled and incubated following a premature emergency caesarean, after Mum had 3 miscarriages including still births at 6 months. I think after the torture of not only finally carrying me successfully, but at the amount of ‘trying’ to conceive with my Dad, when I came along I was considered a miracle! Personally I think it was more a sigh of relief on Mum’s part actually! Although they tried to put a brave face on it and call me ‘special’ I was considerably more of a large potential money sucking pain in the neck – now proven and proud of it!

Dad tried a few different careers when he left school, then landed a good job where he stayed for 25 years and trained as a chemist. Mum insisted on making my early life hell by staying at home for 4 years to ‘look after me’. I was naturally the most behaved model child anyone could ever have as I often remind her and so I didn’t really need looking after. If anyone needed looking after it was my Dad, he tried to blow up the house more times than I care to remember with some kind of dodgy chemical experiments he would try out which he pitched to my mum as being for educational purposes for his only daughter – I was 3 years old!!!!! Whilst growing crystals and nurturing tadpoles is interesting for a very small child, mixing chemical compounds in a small test-tube in the kitchen didn’t quite do it for me nor Mum.

My dad is a geek through and through. He is a cross between a mad scientist and a sad dark room techie (no offence to any techies out there I love you all!). The real change came when I was 4 and Dad bought his first non games console computer. I remember it distinctly as it was quite a major turning point in my childhood. He brought this thing home, it was massive, really bloody ugly and to a young child the fact it took 10 minutes of impatiently waiting whilst it loaded a naff game, was not enough to contain my inability to deal with boredom. This ultimately led to my ‘defiance’ as I was consistently told when shouted out to stop whinging and to wait or go to bed! The story of my life!