In 2011 I made the transition to freelancing as a writer, trainer and consultant after twenty years in the employ of the voluntary and public sectors. If you’re interested in my political writing, have a look over here.
But you came here to find out about me. So here goes. This is my story….
I grew up in a cheerful village just outside Warwick. My parents were teachers and I was accompanied through childhood by an older sister, two de-facto sisters, thirteen cousins, two cats, a parade of interested and attentive adults and a permanent soundtrack of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
At eighteen, I moved north where I read American Studies at the University of Manchester. Hit by a bus after attending my first lecture, I spent the first three weeks of my independent adult life hopping up three flights of stairs to reach my flat and taking taxi rides up and down the Oxford Road.
Halfway through my degree, I was an overseas student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for two semesters. I studied American law, film and literature and became a campus activist, in particular writing notorious columns for a student newspaper.
I stayed in Manchester for three years after graduating, beginning a career working with young people through positions at Brook and Salford City Council. I also enjoyed a brief period writing an entirely fictitious agony aunt column.
The next two years were spent in glorious sunshine in Sydney, Australia. On the northern beaches, I developed and delivered alternative education provision for young people excluded from school and in central Sydney I was a youth worker for a community of Aboriginal young people.
Opting to return home, I spent the next five years working in the voluntary sector with young people and then parents of disabled children, firstly in Oxford and latterly in Bath and then another six working with local and central government to improve services to young people in and leaving care.
I live in Bath with my civil partner and our one remaining cat (sniff). For the last three years I have been captain of the Lansdown Cricket Club Ladies XI but I’ve just retired. I’m looking forward to a season in the ranks, wielding my bat with a flourish and bowling unplayable deliveries from the Hospital End.
