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I came to feel like I was living in a museum.  that I would soon turn into a fossil.  Don't get me wrong, I love classical music, and especially the Baroque, but more for listening.  performing it was sucking the life out of me.  that's when I started to drink.  In the pub I met Larry, a bricklayer.  I was working there at the time serving chips and ale.  The following year we were married.  then came the kids.  It was not an easy life, we had to struggle, but we did okay, and we were happy.  He was really a lovely man, very devoted to me and the kids.  Back then I started to vote Labour.  In fact, I had never voted before in my life.  Both my parents and carol were died in the wool Tories, which is also why we don't speak.  But Larry was a very compassionate man, with very compassionate politics, and he reallyl inspired me.  But all good things must come to an end.  He was run over by a truck on his way to work one morning.  We couldn't  manage any more.  Britain was under Margaret Thatcher, probably one of the most loathsome human beings to ever creep across the surface of the earth.  I could no longer pay the mortgage and we just barely got this council flat, where now you are sitting with me.

The drinking got worse, and finally when Labour swept in again in the nineties, rehab and recovery programs also began to open up, and I entered a series of day programs as well as joining Alcoholics Anonymous.  It changed my life.  It was still really hard for the kids, and I just had to accept whatever job I could find in order to scrape out a living for us.  I did a lot of waitressing.  and I am still working in the same pub again, part time, but it's enough to pay the bills.  But I was also taking an interest in art. ..