I have lived many years in London and have spent years travelling and living overseas. I imagined I would always be an outsider in a village. But this place was special...II have never before or since felt so much at home in any place. There were so many unusual characters...who accepted me as they found me and welcomed me like a long lost friend...and I relished their various eccentricities.

We immediately fell in with our neighbour Edna. She is approaching 90, she has a nursing background, ... More

I have lived many years in London and have spent years travelling and living overseas. I imagined I would always be an outsider in a village. But this place was special...II have never before or since felt so much at home in any place. There were so many unusual characters...who accepted me as they found me and welcomed me like a long lost friend...and I relished their various eccentricities.

We immediately fell in with our neighbour Edna. She is approaching 90, she has a nursing background, as do I. One of the first things she did was to invite me to a writing group that met in her home. My 7 year old daughter often disappeared and I quickly learned to look first in Edna's where she would be recounting her day and telling stories of her own!

I was not long in knowing Edna before we evolved a system of bartering…I do her shopping, she thanks me in free range eggs from her friends along the lane…I give her bananas, she gives me marmalade…we have an enchanted friendship…which I think the gods have given her to tide her over a hard period in her family history. And perhaps those same gods gave her to me as comfort, we are so far from our family here!

One day Edna and I were basking like two happy cats in the warm sun outside her barn conversion, easily passing the time of day. I was talking about looking for work that fitted in with my commitments, and saying that cleaning would probably be ideal…I had talked of gardening…but Edna had dismissed that idea as being much too hard work! 

Edna said I should put an advert in the Parish magazine. She also said she wanted me to clean her place for an hour a week and I suspect she later steam rolled her daughter in law into taking me on for a couple of hours a week also.  Less