My background

Background

I feel that I have hit a brick wall and am sitting on the ground with concussion.

Since I was 16 years old, I have worked. My education at best was mediocre, mainly due to my parents moving from country to country every other years, mainly between South Africa and Germany.  I felt I was always in catch up mode and never caught up.  The school year in South Africa started in January and in Europe it started in September. I was either moved forward and missed out or back and missed out, as the curriculum was so different. 

Sadly as a result of the many moves between continents, I don�t have any child hood friends. In those days, there was no email, face book, twitter etc, so once you left unless you were committed to writing letters, which took weeks to reach each other, there was no form of other contact. 

Subsequently I lost contact with just about everyone, and have little interest to now search out those whose names I remember. 

My parents strap line in my later years was, �when you are 18 you are out and on your own two feet.� This has stayed with me for life. I met Geoff my husband when I was 17. I was  living and working in Germany at the time. 

He was 10 years older than me and having been brought up in a straight household, where my father dictated the speed, the mood, the weather, I remember admiring Geoff for his somewhat scatty laid back attitude. 

I remember one of our first meetings, we went skiing together for the weekend. I was fascinated when he pulled out his portable battery operated razor and started shaving whilst driving.  He proceeded to lose his passport form the hotel to the boarder and really was not bothered at all. The same day he lost that razsor, but thankfully found his passport. 

Coming from a very organised and structured background , I just loved it.  6 months of writing letters and some phone calls, and a couple of short weekend in Italy, Holland and Austria,  I moved to the UK. Geoff and I have spent 35  great years together this year. 

In fact, we had the most beautiful anniversary cruise booked for this November as a special aniversay present, which we sadly had to cancel, as I will be in the middle of chemo. Hopefully when all this is behind us, and Geoff stays healthy, there will be other cruises we can book. For now it is something I simply can�t think of.