This is my Life (4)

We were settling again, having now being born in Cosford, living in Thorney Island, moving to Malta, living with a variety of relatives, living in Lincolnshire, living in Germany and so on my parents decided to buy a house in Derbyshire about a 20 minute walk from my Dad's family. My mum scrapped and scraped to get enough money together to pay a deposit on a house which she loved and I never felt really at home in. By taking coins from my Dads pockets when he came home drunk she managed to get enough money together to pay for our flights back to the UK from Germany.

Having arrived in the Uk we immediately moved in with my Dad's mum - Grandma. For six months I slept with my Grandma, my mum and dad had the spare room and my brother had the box room all to himself. I was registered to start the local school about six months into the first year of senior school. My mum, Grandma, and two aunties all set about knitting me a jumper because I had to have a uniform, well you never saw a jumper like it, the sleeves were in different knitting, the back was different to the front, and off I went to a new school again where I knew not one person, wearing an old white shirt of my Dads, my multi knitted jumper and a new pair of shoes, I walked the 25 minutes to the school with a girl from the next street who my Grandma had arranged for me to walk with. Obviously as soon as I was at school, it was a complete culture shock, yet again.

I hated this school and got shouted at the first day for not telling the teacher I was new. The only teachers I liked were the art and drama teachers. Despite starting school 6 months into the first year, I managed to come first in my class for art and landed a role in the school play by reading a character of a drunken woman from a book in English. I knew how to act drunk, I had seen this alot with my parents in the past. I had no friends and tried my best to do my school work but found it quite hard. I decided for a school English project to do something about Florence Nightingale who came from Derbyshire, a school teacher took me to her house and I actually sat on her bed. I loved English lessons and wrote some brilliant stories and poems.... I didn't realise it at the time but when I left school they kept my work as Examples for student teachers so I lost them all.

My Dad's sister was married and her husband's mum lived next door to them. My Uncle told me that his mum had alot of very old newspapers and said he would arrange for me to go and have a look. I visited this old lady one Sunday, I had nothing better to do, but we spent hours looking through the newspapers to find articles on the Crimean War and Florence Nightingale. One day she asked me if I would like to stay for tea and we made it together, salad and fresh bread etc, and I stayed later. The old lady who I call Mrs B used to sew things for the church and she gave me a little dolly bag to take home. We were both good company for each other, she loved me to go and enjoyed my company. This went on of quite a time it seemed probably the best part of a year.

I wrote to a magazine telling them how lonely I was and they suggested that I volunteered to visit old people who were lonely and I did this for a bit, but was still struggling to find friends. Everyone at school had known each other before and friends were paired off, but I did find one nice kind girl who invited me to join her and her friends one night to play outside because she realised I had no friends and that helped me alot, and we still send each other Christmas Cards, she was really kind.

Mrs B died when I was between 11 and 12 and I was really sad but we had stopped spending our time with each other for quite a while. When they sorted out her things my Uncle gave me a glass dressing table set with a tray, 2 candle sticks and a couple of little pots. I put this on my dressing table which was a second hand kidney shaped cupboard with a curtain round and mirrors at the top. I didn't have much as we had lost everything or cleared everything away when we travelled.

About six months after getting the set, I was fast asleep one night when I awoke with a start. (It was if someone had shouted wake up now urgently) I sat bolt upright in bed and didn't know why I had been woken, everything was quiet and then just as I settled to go back to sleep, there she stood at the foot of my bed Mrs B. She was standing there in an apron just looking at me with a calm look on her face. Well I was petrified!

I said telepathically, because I couldn't speak for fear what do you want you're scaring me. She stayed there, I pinched myself literally thinking I was dreaming but I definately wasn't. She stayed for about what seemed five minutes or so, just looking and eventually just faded. I couldn't move, I hated the house we were in anway it was so full of people following me. Eventually, I plucked up the courage to run into my mum and dad's room, and shook for ages, my mum said she had just come to say hello, but for months afterwards I checked the wardbrobes, under the bed and behind the curtains just in case.

She has never visualised herself again but I know we have a relationship spiritually now and she is often described to me by others who never knew her. This was my real awakening and from there on in, things were never the same again. I must add that I have no fear at all now and would love her to come and chat to me, but she never has come back, but I am sure she guides me along.