It's all about me - well, mostly

As you know, my name is Sally. I am a mother and grandmother and I now live on the South Coast where we, my husband Neil and I, run a shop selling gifts as well as key cutting, shoe repairs, engraving, 3D printing and a host of other things. I love living by the sea and am extremely fortunate to have an uninterrupted view of it from both my lounge and my bedroom windows. Drawing back the curtains in the morning and being greeted by the vast expanse of the English Channel is good for the soul. I frequently find myself just staring at it for inspiration when I'm searching for a certain word to use in my writing or I'm stuck on how to progress the plot.

The only down side to living here is that I am too far away to see my grandchildren as often as I would like but I frequently FaceTime with them – although to be fair it's usually my daughters and I chatting whilst the children play in the background. Every so often I'll say something interesting which catches their attention and they'll rush over to discuss it with me or they'll want to show me their latest dance moves, football skills, etc.

I am a natural organiser, something that can drive other people nuts. I like order. I like items being in their proper place preferably labelled and I have files for absolutely everything. The books on my bookcase are sorted into genres and then into alphabetical order by author and I can get quite cross if a book is to big to fit in the space where I want it to go. Although I put up with a lot of stick from my loved ones, (a certain person who shall not be named loves to turn the odd spoon round the wrong way  in the cutlery drawer), being organised has helped enormously in both my home and work life, including my writing

Over the years I've worked a variety of jobs. I started selling advertising space for a local newspaper. Then Neil and I went travelling around Europe in a converted transit van doing the usual grape picking, working on campsites, etc. On our return I got a job as a PA for the Purchasing Manager of a baby buggy manufacturer where my organisational skills came to the fore. As they also did during my role as Office Manager for a UK franchising operation where I assisted the MD with franchisee support and recruitment, I arranged conferences and managed the day to day office administration. A lot of the skills I acquired from these roles have been of great benefit to me when writing my book.

I applied for and got the role as a Special Needs Teaching Assistant when our youngest daughter started school. As our children are close in age for a while they all attended the same Primary school and it was extremely handy when I got the job there too. It meant I was lucky enough to be able to spend all the school holidays with them. By that time we were living in an Edwardian Town House and the fact that we were close to both the town centre and the town's two largest parks meant that my friends and their children and our children's school friends spent a lot of the school holidays at our house too. That might sound like a terrible idea to some people but Neil and I loved the noise and the chaos.  Our house and garden were always full of dens - they especially loved the fact that we had a cellar! I really do miss those days.

Although I had always intended to leave the Primary school at the same time that the youngest left to start Secondary school I actually ended up working there for a total of 11 years. During those years I covered a number of roles – one of which was to teach art and design. Anyone who knows me would testify to my complete lack of artistic talent. Fortunately for me my best friend Helen, who had not only attended art school but enjoyed a highly successful career as an illustrator, came to my rescue and offered to help me out with the lessons. She soon saw for herself just how poor my skills were as I attempted to draw Egyptian Hieroglyphics on the whiteboard. She came up to the board and relieved me of the marker pen whispering 'You've just drawn what looks like a man's privates!' Suffice to say after that she drew all the demonstrations leaving me to supervise the children.

Helen and I enjoyed going for walks together usually around the local reservoir but we were happy to try new places. However, Helen was always reluctant to walk along the canal bank, a beautiful, peaceful, tranquil walk that Neil, the dog and I frequently took. Finally, she confessed her reluctance was due to her fear of us discovering a dead body floating in the canal. “Murderers always dispose of the body in the canal,” she told me. Having managed to convince her that in over 20 years of living in the area not once, to my knowledge, had a body being fished from the canal, murdered or otherwise, she agreed to give it a try. The canal walk became a regular occurrence which thankfully remained dead body free. Sadly Helen died in 2019 and I wrote a dedication to her on the front page of 'An Accidental Serial Killer' which I know would have made her laugh. 

In the end I gave up working at the school to look after my father whose health had deteriorated following the death of my mother. At this time Neil was working for a small but national security company. My father's death left me with a lot of time on my hands so Neil suggested I review and revise his company's administration functions.

By the time this was completed we had made the decision that we wanted to work for ourselves and so we started The Problem Fixers, a domestic concierge and building maintenance service which became quite successful very quickly. Unfortunately I had an accident which required reconstructive surgery with a lengthy recovery time. I couldn't work and soon became fed up and frustrated. The children had moved away. The two eldest were living up North and the youngest was teaching in China. Neil and I had always wanted to live by the sea and had the opportunity arisen when the children were younger we would have relocated, but once they were settled in school I was reluctant to move them. Never living anywhere for very long when I was young had been very unsettling for me and, unlike Neil, I hadn't really kept in touch with any of the friends I went to school with; I didn't want that for my kids. I have to say that staying put while the children grew up worked out just as I had hoped. All three of our children are still in contact with friends they made in Primary school – best friends, friends for life. Now though they were all grown up and had flown the nest and there was nothing to hold us back. So we sold up in Warwickshire and purchased our shop by the sea.