My early childhood memories are few but vivid.

According to my mum I was born with a twisted bowel and the doctors sent me home to die. However, she persevered, feeding me drops of milk and I pulled through. There are photos of me as a baby showing that I was completely bald for most of my first year and one, in particular of me sitting in a wooden 'rocking duck' that my grandad had made.

I was born in London but following a separation leading to an acrimonious divorce my mother and grandparents moved to Norwich when I was two or three. I never knew my father but we met him once on a bus in London (he was the conductor) and mum didn't tell me until we got off. However, I do recollect a few uncomfortable visits to my paternal grandmother* which involved sitting still and quiet on a hard chair until it was time to go.

Then there was the enormous easter egg in a huge box on top of the wardrobe that I was not allowed to have because it came from 'him'.

The house we moved to was  a large Victorian terrace with a very long garden. One of the things I hated was the back parlour (only used on high days and holidays) because I had a recurring nightmare about a train coming up the garden path and crashing through the French windows. Consequently, I was always ill at ease, listening for trouble, when the family spent any time in there.

There was a most interesting hole in the garden where I could find frogs and I took great delight in bringing them indoors, knowing that my grandmother would be terrified and an orchard where I was allowed to climb the trees under supervision. 

My grandad had been very strict with my mum and her brother but he was a real softy where I was concerned. He would give me rides in his wheelbarrow down to feed the chickens and make wooden toys for me. I still have the money box he made me for my 4th birthday. It has 16 screws on the bottom to discourage me from opening it!

Another thing I remember about my 4th birthday was that I had measles and was brought downstairs from my sickbed for the birthday tea.  I didn't feel like eating so played about with my food, cutting it up and arranging it to give to the rabbit I hoped I was getting. But suddenly I was sick all over the plate. I can remember how upset I was at spoiling the rabbit's tea. I needn't have worried , though, because I didn't get the rabbit!

Our neighbour was an elderly lady called Mrs Newham. One day, for some reason there was a gap in the fence and I wandered through it and into her kitchen. She was highly amused at this unexpected visit but my grandmother was terribly embarrassed. I'm not sure how often I was allowed to see her after that but when we eventually moved  house she gave me a little silver purse containing a silver threepenny piece which I still have to this day.

Then there was Aunt Alice. She was my nan's eldest sister and lived in Grimsby. I remember the first time I met her. I think I must have been expecting her to look like Alice in Wonderland because (as I've never been allowed to forget) it seems I stared at her long and hard and then slapped her face!

It seems I wasn't a very good little girl at times, maybe because I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents who tended to spoil me, but I adored my mother, even though she was more strict.

The reason for having dancing lessons is not clear but I vaguely remember going to a lady's house and dancing in what seemed to be her living room. After a short time these lessons ceased and I was sent to a piano teacher called Beryl Henrietta Bunn.

Later, mum explained that dancing 'used up too much energy' and the doctor had recommended a less active pastime. It's true, I often suffered from bouts of shortness of breath which were quite frightening but if someone told me a story - or when I was older, if I concentrated on reading or sewing - the attack would pass. The mystery about these incidents was that, although they lasted until I was in my twenties and then faded out, when I had similar 'attacks' in my forties, the doctor could find no written record in my past medical notes.

*Since making contact with my father's family I have learned that his mother died two days after his birth. His father remarried and so the grandmother I remember was, in fact, his stepmother.

Despite a poor start to my schooling whereby I missed most of the first year due to some 'nervous illness' that no-one was prepared to explain to me in later life I enjoyed school and did well.

I remember my first class, and the teacher, Miss Randall but I don't think I learned much as because of my poor eyesight I spent a great deal of time playing in the sand tray - that's when I wasn't absent.

At home I learned to read somehow but couldn't write much and only in capital letters. When I went back to school in the second year of infants I was put in Mrs. Hipper's class and one girl took great delight in telling me that if I was in her class I'd never pass the 11plus.

Fortunately for me, we moved house during this year and I found myself in the Infant school right opposite our new house - or rather bungalow - in Costessey.

Someone made an error and I was put in a class with children a year older. The teacher realised that as my reading was good I should be able to catch up with arithmetic so she gave me individual lessons at break times. In those days 'class positions' were the be-all and end-all  so I can remember that, thanks to her efforts I went from 24th in class to 3rd by the end of that year.

When we went to the Junior School the mistake was discovered and I had to spend two years on the same class. Then, one year after that,  paradoxically, the Headmaster decided that three of us should be given a 'boost' by skipping a class and moving to the 'top' class a year early. However, we were not allowed to take the 11plus with the rest of our classmates. We had to stay in that class for another year! So in my five years at junior school I only had three teachers: Miss Rouse, Mr Chamberlain and Miss Powley.

My childhood was very happy and it was a time when we were free to roam and play where we liked. My playmates were Trevor and Lynne from next door but one on the right and Martin  who lived next door but one on the left. We often went to the woods or the marshes and would come back filthy but happy. If not, everyone had long and interesting gardens and we could make dens or pirate ships or use the greenhouses as spaceships.

 I remember that Lynne's mum lent me loads of books - mainly Enid Blyton's fairly tales  - and I devoured them avidly. There were very few books in our house but I found a copy of Jane Eyre and was scolded when they discovered I had started reading it as they thought I was too young.

It was while we lived at Costessey that mum rediscovered 'Uncle George' a friend of her brother's whom she had courted before she met my father. They had split up and George went to Australia but now he was back and separated from his wife. He and I never really hit it off, and, looking back, I wonder if he resented the fact that mum wouldn't accept his son but expected him to accept me.

As far as I know, apart from one holiday at the seaside as a 'foursome' George lost contact with his son after he married mum Many years later he tracked him down and tried to make up for lost time but there was too much bitterness and it didn't work.

Knowing Uncle George had its advantages though. He ran a Radio TV and Cine shop and had access to 16mm films which he would show at home on Sunday evenings. I was never allowed to stay up for the feature but used to watch the cartoons and the Flash Gordon serial before going to bed. He also installed a television and built a very high aerial in the back garden. On a good night we could get a signal from Sutton Coldfield and enjoy a grainy picture which may or may not last  for the entire programme. Of course, it wasn't too long before our region had its own transmitter but, for a time, my friends were pretty jealous that we had a television - even if we couldn't guarantee to see a programme all the way through before the reception faded.

My tenth year was probably the end of a period of reasonable stability because things were going to change in many ways during the next few years.

First there was the 11 plus and a move to Grammar School which coincided with moving to Norwich when Mum finally married George and he became 'Pop'. They had their shops (with flat above) only a few minutes walk from the school so I came home for lunch every day.

My sister Wendy was born a year later and Mum nearly died from a haemorrhage. Relations were a bit fraught between Pop and my grandmother so it was his mother who came to look after the new baby. Granny Smith always seemed a very hard woman and she obviously did not enjoy her new role. As soon as Mum was discharged from hospital she left her to cope.

I tried to help by getting up early and making the first bottle so that mum could stay in bed to feed the baby. Then I'd peel the potatoes for lunch before going to school at 7.30 to practise the piano. It wasn't convenient to play in the flat any more in case the baby was asleep but it meant I had sole access to the grand piano in the school hall for over an hour.

School meant a great deal to me and I would pass many days in the holidays helping prepare the books for the new intake. In fact, I had a couple of schoolgirl crushes:  firstly the nun who was in charge of the bookroom and also taught English, and then, after she was transferred to another convent,  I became attached to the music teacher who lived a few minutes walk away and who agreed to give me piano lessons when I told her I had given up (because the horrible man my parents had found when I left Miss Bunn  was a lech).

As proof of my impressionable nature my determination to become a nun faded when Sister T went away and, instead, I trained as a music teacher!

Fortunately the rift between Mum and my grandmother eventually healed  and it wasn't long before she joined us for weekends on Pop's pride and joy - a small cabin cruiser. I remember the day he bought it. Mum and I watched as he struggled with the controls, trying to get it away from its moorings. He had one or two very near misses with the bank and other craft and afterwards admitted that if someone had offered him a fiver for it he would have accepted. 

He and a mate took it to its new berth nearer Norwich and Mum drove Wendy and me back in the car. Of course, he did learn to manage it eventually but the craze didn't last for more than a couple of years. I was very thankful for that because it was my job to balance precariously at the front holding the mooring rope and then jump ashore to help pull the boat in. I couldn't swim (still can't) and we never wore lifebelts!

When they sold the boat they bought a caravan at Weybourne so we had many pleasant Sundays at the seaside - whatever the weather.

At fifteen I entered  the  fifth form preparing for G.C E exams. There was no time for a social life and I didn't really want one either.

I was still getting up early to go and practise the piano at school and the only thing that put me off briefly was when a huge spider descended from nowhere and landed on my hand.

In those days shops had an 'early closing' day and that meant that every Thursday when I got home from school I had to fit two hours homework into half an hour and then be dragged to the cinema with Mum and Pop. It was their weekly treat but I hated it. You could bet that wherever we sat someone would plonk themselves down in front of us and light up a cigarette.

Once O levels were done and dusted I spent quite a bit of the Summer holiday helping out in the shop. Mum's assistant had left and she was having problems finding another. The only applicant was a middle aged lady who demanded a much higher wage than Mum could afford but she obviously didn't like the idea of hard work.

I casually told her about selling a lot of paraffin in the winter, which meant going out to the shed in the cold and getting the smelly stuff all over your hands. She declined the job but I was roped in to fill  the gap. My wages for six weeks work was a small radio.

Going back to school was a relief and as there were only nine of us in the Lower Sixth it felt very different from previous years.The sixth form used to have a Common Room in an adjacent building but they had abused the privilege by taking in fish and chips (!) so we were now accommodated on the top floor right beside the staffroom.

The music teacher decided that if I was really serious about going to music college I needed to learn a second instrument. I loved the sound of the  oboe but when mum learned that a clarinet was a lot cheaper that was what I was given. My early efforts sounded like a cow in labour and I never felt at home with the instrument.

Unfortunately I upset the Latin teacher by practising in the Common Room early in the morning. Instead of  coming next door and asking me to stop she had her revenge by making my life a misery in lessons. There were only three of us in the Latin class; Heather, my best friend and Josephine. Heather was undoubtedly the best student but I don't think I was any worse than Jo. However, Miss C constantly criticised me and claimed that I'd never pass A level. After putting up with this for a year I changed  subjects and took English instead.

That meant an awful lot of catching up to do in the holidays but I was also trusted to stay and 'look after' the shops when my parents went on holiday. Pop had a really nice chap who helped out with the repairs and he came in fulltime for two weeks but I had the hardware shop to myself. I enjoyed it, in a way, but it proved to me that I wouldn't want to run a shop all my life.

Back to school in the Upper Sixth I was completely astounded to be voted Headgirl thanks to a 'plot' by the new Lower Sixth formers. There were over twenty of them so they outnumbered my peer group and had decided that the tradition of having a Catholic headgirl  should be broken. (Depite being a Cathollic school about  three quarters of us were non-catholic in those days).

The result caused a furore and I offered to resign but the Head talked me into doing it. It meant standing on the stage every morning while the classes trouped in for assembly to stop anyone from talking and this petrified me.

In the first few weeks there was a big argument when the Lower Sixth wanted the right to wear the special 6th form scarf - which had only been worn by the Upper 6th until then.  Straight away I said I didn't see any reason why they shouldn't but my fellow Upper 6th strongly disagreed and I was accused of being in the Lower 6th pockets because they had voted me in.

I said the fact that we hadn't been allowed to wear the scarf was no reason to stop them from having it - and, after all, if you were going to buy a scarf you might as well have an extra year's wear out of it. The head agreed with me and the Lower Sixth bought their scarves. Eventually my school mates calmed down.

After a school career of being rather too serious, Heather and I devised a plan for the last day of term. She arrived very early and we hid all the school bells. There were no buttons to push then. Lessons were timed by handbells rung in each corridor and at the end of the school year everything depended on the bell to announce the day's events.

The staff were furious and several of them invaded our common room demanding that we find the culprits.

"It must be some of the lower sixth. None of you would do a thing like this."

Needless to say, I was put in charge of tracking down the missing clangers and  as I had a tendency to blush and look guilty even if I was innocent I was only too pleased to escape.

Heather and I decided the joke had gone far enough and I tipped off the caretaker that it might be a good idea to look under the stage. He knew very well that we were the only ones in school early that morning but, as far as I know, he didn't give us away.

At 20 I was at the beginning of my final year at Music College in London, living in a shared flat in Ealing with four other students.

In a way, the only things I discovered during my three years was how much more there was to learn about music and how mediocre my own skills were compared to the majority of  other people there.

Let's face it, I could never sing (even if I could squeak in tune), my piano playing was OK provided I had the music in front of me (but memorizing or improvisation eluded me): when it came to written harmony I had to do it 'mathematically' as I could never hear what I wrote and as I'd never been good at 'aural tests' the only way I (and quite a few others) passed the ear training part of the final exam was, frankly, to cheat.

It was a tradition that the students with perfect pitch would write out the five or six chord sequences the examiners used and the rest of us would learn them. Then, all we had to do was recognise which chord sequence we were given. If you couldn't manage that then you didn't deserve to pass anyway!

At the end of the first term I celebrated my 21st birthday and mum wanted me to go home for a 'dinner dance' at the Norwood Rooms in Norwich. After quite a bit of haggling she agreed that my boyfriend and a few other friends from college could come too. They stayed at the pub opposite our shop.

The evening was not hugely successful from my point of view. My relationship with J, the love of my life, was beginning to go sour. Well, in fact, he was starting to get fed up with me but didn't know how to let me down gently. The problem was that he needed space but I wanted to spend every minute at his side. Looking back, I must have been like an eager little puppy who became snappy and jealous if anyone else approached.

We stayed together until the end of the academic year - with  me in the hopes that things would improve while he was just patiently biding his time until we went our separate ways. However, when he asked me to find out the name of a first year student whom he saw on the train to and from Devon, because he fancied her, I had to accept that our relationship was dead.

Mum and my stepdad came to pick me up at the end of term and I bought a small bottle of brandy to drown my sorrows on the way home. But it didn't work.

In those days of teacher shortages it was easy to get a job and at my first interview I was offered a post on the spot at a secondary school for girls in the Fens. One of the senior teachers took me under his wing but things got out of hand when one day he kissed me passionately. I'd regarded him as a father figure not a lover!

The next year I found myself at an Infant school in Norfolk for the next few years.

Whale and I had been married just over a year, I was teaching at an Infant School (the same one I went to as a child) and we were living in the flat above my parents' shop but saving hard for a deposit on our own house.

One of ways we boosted our nestegg was to take part in the TV programme "Mr and Mrs". Unfortunately the recording coincided with a parents' evening at school so I pretended to have a migraine.

We won the jackpot but were found out by the headteacher because the school welfare officer was in the audience and recognised me.

We evntually had a bungalow built at Ashby St Mary (in Norfolk)  and the builder used my own design - but it had to be reduced in size to fit our budget. It actually cost £3400 including the land and our mortgage payment was £45 a month.

The move coincided with a new job at a Primary school on the same side of Norwich but I only stayed one year because after a second miscarriage the doctor advised me to give up fulltime teaching.

I arranged to work two days a week at my old Grammar school but was already pregnant when I started in the September and CC was born in the Spring.

When Jay was born seventeen months later I felt our family was complete and settled down to be a housewife and mother until a call from the headmaster at the village school lured me back part-time (two afternoons a week) to teach music.

My mother volunteered gladly to babysit and so I was back at work if only for a few hours.

In spite of  quite a few disadvantages this was a very happy time in my life.

I had two lovely children and a Mum who looked after them a couple of afternoons a week so that I could teach music at the village school for a change of scenery. I was also able to fit in a few piano pupils.

CC and Jay were very good at playing together and have always been close. In fact, the only time I had to keep them apart was when CC was at the stage of building things while Jay wanted to knock them down. It meant one had to  be in the playpen while the other was outside.

It was interesting to note that, although we never made a big distinction between girl's and boy's toys, CC always went for the dolls and Jay was never without a car in his hand as he crawled round the room.

Later they  played with Action men and Sindy dolls together but I came to the conclusion that choice of play is more nature than nurture when it comes to gender.

My early thirties were a time of almost blissful domesticity but I realised that despite giving up teaching gladly to have a family I would go back full time as soon as the children started school.

Now that our family was complete, Whale lost all interest in sex and told me I must be a sex maniac if I still wanted to 'do it'. We had a few arguments on the subject and eventually he said he wouldn't mind if I 'went elsewhere'.

The idea appalled me at first but then I met someone I really fancied and things fell into place remarkably easily. However, having a lover was one thing, falling in love with him made life much more complicated.

We had agreed, at first, that things would not get out of hand but they did and to cut a long and painful story short it all ended in tears.

Not just once - but twice!

Maybe I'll go into detail one day but for now that's it; there's quite enough about my love life in the blog already.