On Thorley Street there used to stand a small thatched cottage. It was tumble down, Today the land where it stood is hidden behind tall hedges, but when I visit the village in my old age, I see that cottage still. While my father served overseas during the war I lived there with my grandparents, my mother and two younger brothers.

The war ended, Father came home and a couple of years later we moved to our new house near the church. I passed the eleven-plus exam and was scheduled to attend Herts and Essex High School, but instead was sent to a convent in Broadstairs because of suspected health reasons (nothing was wrong), and started at Herts and Essex the next Spring. I was not a very successful student, but teachers liked my writing.

My teen years were filled with school, church where I sang in the choir, tennis, reading everything I could find, bicycling, walking over the fields and through the woods of Thorley, and dancing at different events with a handsome and light-footed fellow named Hedley. We learned the tango and the quick-step at youth club, which was run by the Reverend Robinson.

At the age of eighteen I met an American soldier, in a blind date. We were married and I moved to the States. We had seven children, a wild and chaotic forty-three year marriage, and I lost him in the year 2000.