My family : I have three children - two sons and a daughter - all grown up now and two still living at home (it must be my cooking.) The eldest designs and installs specialised shower rooms, our second son is a Civil Servant (working for the Government) and our daughter, the youngest, who graduated last year with an Honours Degree in Marine Biology, is currently working as a Veterinary Nurse.
As the Americans put it, I'm a Stay-At-Home-Mom. I live, with my husband and family, plus all our pets, less than ten miles away from where I was born, in Yorkshire, northern England. My widowed mother lives in the same village as us so we can keep an eye on her - and she on us! My husband spends his working life travelling the world and is away for months at a time so it's just as well that I'm not a wanderer by nature, and although I like to travel I also like to come back home and I have put my roots down very deep.

My career : I trained as a teacher and after spending the first few years of my career teaching 6 and 7 year olds, I decided to specialise in teaching children with Special Educational Needs and took a further Diploma. I then spent many long and rewarding years teaching children with learning difficulties and behavioural problems but have recently decided that the time has come to finish teaching and devote more time to my family and my many other interests.

The Guides : Much of my spare time is spent with the Guides - after spending several years running a Red Cross Cadet unit, my friend Carol and I opened the first ever Guide unit in our village (and considering that Paull is mentioned in the Domesday book, not before time!) Besides giving the girls in the village and surrounding areas a sense of purpose, we got a lot out of it ourselves - we learnt many things and had lots of new experiences, all at an age when many of our peers were settling down in front of the TV with the knitting and the grandchildren! We've also travelled abroad, naturally taking the Guides with us as well as our own daughters, made many new friends of all ages, and look forward to many more adventures before we hang up our woggles for good!

Canoeing : I didn't learn to swim until I was in my thirties, which is one of my greatest regrets - think of all that wasted time! Since becoming a fairly proficient swimmer however (I eventually qualified as an ASA swimming teacher) I also took up canoeing along with my children, although naturally they went on to be MUCH better at it than I ever will be! But I'm not the only lady canoeist who refuses to let her age and sex get in the way and in 2000 we formed the Kingston Mummies, a canoe polo team where the (all-female) members' ages at the time totalled over 220 years - and that's a team of six! We were always noted for being the strongest team in the league - the one that sits at the bottom holding everyone else up - but we enjoyed it enormously, which was the whole point. It tied in nicely with my Guiding responsibilities too - as county Water Activities Adviser I've introduced many Guides (and their leaders) to the joys of getting wet! Sadly, the Mummies had to hang up their spraydecks when, due to circumstances entirely beyond our control, we could no longer field a full team, but not to be put entirely into mothballs, we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into helping to organise and run the Hull International Canoe Polo Challenge each year.

Archery : My latest pastime is archery, also as a direct result of Guides: they were looking for volunteers to train as archers leaders, I happened to be at that meeting......... We trained for three months on alternate Sundays, a total of 50 hours, and emerged as fully-fledged GNAS Community Archery Leaders, authorised to teach groups of Guides (and anyone else who is interested.)
We've now set up our own Archery Club, meeting and practising at Guideacres, the county camp site.

Community Life : Despite all this involvement with the Guides and canoeing, I also manage to find time for my local community; I'm a member of the village's Parish Council and was Chairman for several years, and I've been helping the children at the village school construct their own school website. Officially now I've "retired" and fitting everything in should be less of a rush, but I've been working for the past two years for the local daily newspaper, writing a regular column of local news from Hedon, Paull and Preston. The pages are all archived on the 'net (naturally) at http://local-news.freeservers.com . I sometimes wonder how I ever found time to go out to work!