New Phase: Part One of Three

It has been a tough couple of years … as may have been made obvious by the lack of posts.

The Nottington to Nottingham move lasted 3 months. The friend I moved in with, although the gesture was well meant, wanted more than a friendship and became angry and resentful when it became more and more clear that I wanted only to be friends. As friends, we got on very well and had lots of fun times but the pressure started to wear me down and make me really unhappy so I decided to return to my hometown and my support system.

That decision should have been easier than it was but having let out my house for 13 months (so that the tenants wouldn’t have to leave just before Christmas) I had nowhere to go back to. Finding somewhere to rent was proving more difficult than I imagined. The first place I wanted to view (a gorgeous cottage on a footpath called Artists Row … how utterly romantic is that) was open to taking a tenant on state benefits once she found out I had ME because, sadly, her son had been diagnosed with ME as well. Her kindness brought a tear to my eye – I had been fearful that no one was going to accept me as a tenant but the first place I found, that I thought I could be really happy in, would. I have always felt I was an extraordinarily lucky person – these things often happen to me … perfectly timed ‘c0incidences’.

I had to then find a way of getting to Weymouth and back again. Train. It was almost impossible to travel unaccompanied as I would forget where I was going and just get on any train with a familiar destination. I once got on the Bristol train instead of Weymouth even though I had the correct train written on my hand, typed into my phone and I had been walked to the right platform entrance. The friend who took me wasn’t allowed on the platform without a ticket but I only had 10 minutes to wait …what could go wrong!?! I heard the announcement for the Bristol train and got on it. In hindsight, I can see why. My son is at University there and, from Weymouth, that was the train I was most used to catching.

Thankfully the conductor found me a new route home. I rang my son to tell him what I had done and he came to Bristol Templemeads, talked his way onto the platform to meet me off the train, and we spent an unexpected, but lovely, hour or so having lunch and waiting for the Weymouth train. He was allowed back onto the platform to see me off on the right train as well. The whole saga was all another stroke of good luck really as I got to see my boy!

Anyway, on the day I decided to leave the move for another three months, a friend rang me and told me that she recently had coffee with a school friend she hadn’t seen for years. This woman, another Sally, was splitting up with her husband and was looking for someone to rent a room from her. She didn’t mind if I just came for a month to give me a base to look for somewhere more permanent. I moved in. Fell in love with Sally, Emily (her daughter) and Rosie (their Springer Spaniel) and stayed until my tenants left and I moved back into my own home. They have become part of my family and my two babies (23 and 25) and Emily (23) all think of themselves as brothers and sisters which is lovely!

Here is a photo i love of my “children” holding me up and dragging me around the ice-rink. I found it absolutely impossible, which was hard to swallow because I had spent a lot of my youth racing round Bristol Ice Rink in the 70’s.