I was born in Germany and as the daughter of a soldier I was lucky enough to spend my childhood moving around the world. I went to boarding school in Derbyshire until I was 16, when I moved to Blackpool where my parents settled on my dad’s return to civvy street. After getting three mediocre A Levels I went to Sheffield University and gained a BSc in Medical Biochemistry, being deluded enough at the time to think that money didn’t matter and that my future lay in medical research. On graduating I realised that science doesn’t pay but as it was too late to do anything about it, so I stayed in Sheffield and worked in a lab for a while.
Charlie the cat attached himself to me in 1997 when I fell in love with him at a cat shelter. Anyone who has wanted to share my life since then has had to put up with him puking everywhere and waking everyone up at 3.30am to be fed or to admire his newly aquired mouse.
I moved to South Lincolnshire in 1999 where I met my husband. He was my boss. I never got that promotion though 
. 2000 was a momentous year for us, we got engaged in February and in April we bought and moved into Tangerine Towers, a vision of suburbia with it’s three bedrooms, driveway, shed and all things semi-detatched.
We married in 2003 in Blackpool. We have been told that no one is likely to forget our wedding as some of the wedding party went on the Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in full wedding regalia… many thanks to my hairdresser who had put so much lacquer on my hair that it hadn’t moved an inch when I got off the rollercoaster!
Our daughter was born almost exactly a year after the wedding, saving me from having to think too hard about an anniversary present. She is a beautiful child, very happy and chatty, we have been lucky to have a daughter with such a good temperament. There’s time for that to change though…
