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I come, originally, from Northampton. I was born there in 1949 and lived in the town up to 1963 and in the village of Blisworth, which is a few miles south of Northampton, until I left to train as an Occupational Therapist at St Loyes, Exeter, in 1968. Since then I've lived in Bristol and Dorking, and then moved to Cumbria in 1979. I've worked almost continuously as an O.T. since 1971, although only part-time when the children were young. At the moment I am delivering Occupational Therapy through The Community Rehablitation Team, which is a new project being run on a joint basis between the Health Authority and the Social Services Department. This means working in the comminity but we are based at our local hospital. The project aims either to enable people to be discharged from hospital, or to prevent admission to hospital, by providing O.T., Physiotherapy and support in the patients home for a limited period of time. If you would like to know more about O.T. you could visit the college site

When I'm not working (and not sailing, walking or chauffeuring someone about) I turn to gardening .

Our garden has had a number of different faces since we came here. At one time we grew a lot of vegetables but we never seemed to be here to pick them. We now have some flower beds which are still in the process of getting established and a large area of grass which was great for the kids to play on when they were younger but now seems to take a lot of cutting. Still, its one way to keep fit.

One of the things which has always been very pleasing about this garden is the line of elm and sycamore trees on the eastern side.

The large elm which you can see in the top left of the picture is extremely sick and we're afraid that it will have to come down. That will be a sad affair if it happens as it has held a tree house, a swing, and one year, an owls nest with young.

Although I am something of a technophobe, I have joined an O.T. e-mail list, and have been receiving mail from other O.T.s, mainly in America, but also from Australia, Indonesia and in the U.K.

The midi file playing on this page is "The Irish Washerwoman" which can be found on the excellent Reelmusic site