...smells a little 'rural' ....

Having been born into a farming family, poor or otherwise, life is usually presumed to be blissfully ignorant of the traumas of city life and glossed over with images from CountryLife and Laura Ashley brochures. However, friends without 4 legs are hard to come by and one usually smells a little 'rural' making acquaintances few and far between. My earliest memories are filled with forcing cats into the rickety old pram I had been handed down by my elder sister and feeding the local sheep whilst contracting bouts of ringworm that itched to high heaven. Even then, at 4 years old, I felt strangely alien in my family. My elder siblings (3 of) were preoccupied with boyfriends/girlfriends/football/and other activities that made me break from the mould further.

As the youngest of my siblings, some may say I had a more 'privileged' time than my elders, and perhaps this was the reason I had much higher expectations of life. I, personally, think it was my mothers fault!

My Father worked and when I say 'worked' I dont mean a 5 hour shift in a local shop. He worked long and hard, sometimes 16 hour days, leaving before we were awake and coming home when we were curled up in our Terry Towelling sheets. To this day, whilst times have been hard or otherwise, I have unlimited amounts of respect for the way he has lived his life, working to support his family, something of a dying feat and probably the main cause of this countries lack of morality. My mother, managed the home, cooked the meals and cared for her children as well as working mornings as housekeeper in the local landowners' plush 7 bedroomed, indoor pooled, croquet lawned home. Unfortunately, being younger than school age, I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming (of course!) to 'work' with her - This, I believe, was where my ideas of life changed for the long haul....