I left my husband one morning in France.I looked at his naked body and noticed how miserable he was and told him I was leaving him. I left a miserable, crying man. My dog and I left La Trinite in different directions; Pooche walking down the ancient hill and me cycling the seventy miles towards Saint Malo,where I would board the boat to England.
I arrived at Saint Malo that night tierd and hungry and stayed the night expereincing Saint Malo's hospitality.The morning after I was first on the boat with my bicyle to sail towards home.I arrived in Portsmouth at teatime and had to endure another,s night bed and breakfast before i could alight a train to hed for Goole, which was and still is where I live.

When I arrived at my rented house I got an unpleasant surprize. The house smelt strongly of urine. The living room was stacked to the ceiling with mattresses, and there was bags of children,s clothes everywhere. I would have to fumigate and tidy.Every now and then a knock at the door would bring a friend of the departee of my house.
'Oh he had borrowed a pool table' one said and a few of his mate's dismantled the pool table and took it out of the back door. After the ex-wife appeared and collected the bags of clothes. The rubbish collector had being paid Seventy pounds for all the rubbish to be collected from the house and back garden, the house was starting to become habitable.
One morning, i was idling away my time digging the garden when i chatted to the women who lived across the main road, over the dutch river. Goole is a Port, where lots of boat travel through bringing in supplies to be loaded onto lorries and driven to their destination. The women informed me that 'Jack' was selling 'dope' from my cellar. He had got into trouble with the drug sellers, and he had made a hasty getaway.The women,s name was called 'Maggie' and became my friend.
I had to find a job, i had no money,only a few hundred pounds in my bank account, what would I do? My past family career was nursing, which had terminated at twenty-four for a change of career into music college. I had then got married and began my own D.I.Y. shop, slowly building a small village shop into a successful Decorating Business. I was alone and skint. My son was still in France, I was not popular with my Father-in-law, and I needed to re-establish a relationship with my parents. They disliked my exhusband a lot!I would write and tell them I had left France, my hubby and my child, not easy!

I found a job as a care-assistant at an Old People's Home near-by working night duty, two night,s a week earning seventy pounds a week. This would be basic living standards but I had once lived in a bedsitter in Liverpool whilst studying music at College, it was nothing new. I would miss the handouts from my Father-in-Law, but they would be stopped I geussed after listening to my ex,s garb.
Working was difficult, I used to go across to Maggies, my friend and collapse in her bed for a sleep during the day. She was company and kept me sane.How I kept awake at night i do not remember.I was independant and feeling better, and puting weight back on, I must have weighed about nine stone. I weigh about twelve and a half at the moment! Then was a start to me beginning life on my own.I was buying clothes from charity shops, paying my house bills and caring for myself. My career path was decidedly at the bottom but I was managing it!

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