the lean years 1992-1995

Bill has packed Toby's old Millfield school trunk with his belongings and gone: for good. The last five years have taken their toll. He takes a well-paid job in the Pharmaceutical industry, Glaxo in Ware, Hertfordshire. And agrees to carry on paying the mortgage and give me £50 a week to live on. Toby is 18 and Celia 16 and still at college. I have no savings and no job. So it's over. I'm finished.


Dazed, I drive to Hawkwell to collect Celia from her friends house. The fuel guage is showing low so pull into a garage to fill up. I fill it to the max and start the engine, nothing happens. To my horror realise I've filled the car with diesel instead of petrol in my numbness at what is happening to my life. I ring Toby from a call box to ask him to come and help me. He brings a friend and together they manage to remove the tank as there's no other way to empty it and deposit the diesel in the side road, much to the chagrin of the garage workers. There is a huge widespread glassy rainbow effect across the tarmac which looks quite fetching in the sunlight but think it's probably broken some law and beat a hasty retreat.


During the next few months get by best I can. The post every morning fills me with dread. The smallest bill is a challenge to pay. Bill tells me to take them to the DSS, explaining my situation, and they'll provide help. 'I'm afraid you've been misinformed Mrs Gibson' she looks at me pityingly 'we don't pay household bills. You'll have to get a job'. I make a sign of the cross mentally.


There is a recession on, unemployment figures have hit the 3 million mark. What chance does someone like me who is over 40 with little real work experience stand of getting a job? A quick perusal of vacancies on the notice boards does little to lift my spirits. Several posts for work as carers, wage £3 per hour. Or supermarket shelf-fillers.


I drive back home feeling very low but resolve to get a cv together, using all my creativity and much needed poetic licence. As I open the front door of my house, see a letter on the floor. A by now, much familiar window envelope . I pick it up reluctantly as know it's from a solicitor. It's a summons. I'm being sued for £250,000: by one of my oldest friends.


I have no money to fight, but a very strong sense of survival does kick in, thankfully. Citizens Advice give me an hour's free solicitor. She is not too optimistic. The 'friend' who is suing me personally and Bill as a limited company, must have swallowed Company House Law whole. I'm incredulous he can be taken seriously but can tell by her expression that he has obviously done his homework thoroughly. And although his claims are nonsense might not be viewed as such in a court of law.


She instructs me to prepare a defence counsel, which means a barrister. £300 per hour. Fortunately my dire financial circumstances mean I can get Legal Aid. We all meet up at Inner Temple chambers. At the end of the meeting I'm left with the distinct impression I could lose my house. Which is all I have left. Outside the offices my solicitor looks pale and shaken, I ask her what I should do and she responds not very comfortingly 'find the nearest bar'.


So the next few months are spent looking for jobs and preparing the defence. I go for one job which I think I might have a good chance of getting, there are over 500 applicants. I don't get it. The rejection letters are mounting up, plus the indignity of having to sign on every week, wears away at what little remaining confidence I have.


While all this is going on I get a call from my daughter's college informing me she hasn't shown up for nearly six months. As she was expelled from her grammar school feel very angry. And where has she been going if not to college? My mouth feels permanently set these days, so many problems to deal with it's hard to know what to prioritise.


An employment agency finds me some work at a credit card company. The rate is £3 per hour. I take it. I work as many hours as I can, often 12 hour shifts. Am not allowed to drive to the office but to another destination nearby, and get the work coach in. Security, apparently.


The women are divided into strata's, the highest are the permanently employed of whom there's very little, next are the contract workers and at the bottom of the pile are temps. That's me. It strikes me these are what would have been the old 'factory fodder' but as manufacturing declines so the unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are now in technology. Robots.


Am there 3 weeks and then sacked. For a asking to make a personal phone call in the day.


So back to looking for work again. Another vacancy I find in a local paper, looks very interesting, for a Contracts Manager. I make an all-out effort in the interview. I'm the only woman. It's a contract job, selling large scale machinery to third world countries. The managing director is undecided, his assistant rings me at home to say he's very excited about me and wants to take me on but the MD isn't sure because I'm a woman. I don't get it.


The next job is working for a company dealing with the MOD. I'm short-listed on this one too. So doing well. Both jobs have been inundated with applicants. In the second short-list interview I'm asked how I feel about working for a much younger male boss? He seems a bit cocky. I don't get the job. Bitterly disappointed as know could have made a success of it. This time felt it was my age that went against me as well as the fact that I'm not a grovelling personality.




Toby and I recce various breakers yards. With a view to buying old minis, doing them up and selling them on. He would do the work and I'd sell them. Well that was the plan. The first two are £50 purchases, toby does them up we get a ticket on them and I sell them on for £500 each. The idea being a middle-age and class type woman would give the sale some gravitas. This works well and we become more encouraged and invest the money from the sales plus a £1000 I've had in a post office account for years and buy a Fiesta. It's 6 weeks old, a write-off. Get it for £2,600, done up it's worth £7,000. We take it to a friend of Toby's to do the work. The idea is to sell it for a big profit, buy two more from the proceeds and keep growing at it.




This worked well except for one thing. The man we'd taken it to who annoying used to refer to me as 'duchess' decides he wants half the profit instead of the money to do the work on the car as agreed. Of course I don't agree to that so he locks the car in his garage. After three weeks I'm despairing almost as every penny I have is invested in this car. He is unreasonable and obnoxious. In desperation I tell the salvage yard owner about and he offers to retrieve the car using a couple of his 'gorillas' which I'm eternally grateful for.




I get the car back and have learnt a salutary lesson. I pay him for the work done, which is terrible as the body-work is out of alignment and therefore not saleable. And decide this is not how I'm going to earn a decent living – I'm way out of my depth.




Meanwhile take some temping work at British Rail headquarters in Southend.
Needing to find some way out of the litigation served on me decide to do some detective work on my former 'friend' to see if he has 'form'. I go back through our conversations and remember he worked in Lagos for a long time. I try to find the London office of the company he worked for but when I finally tracked down people who did know him was met with a curious wall of silence. Not one to give up easily, I had too much at stake, I rang again and again.


Then I wrote. I then rang again, the chap I'd spoken to originally asked if I minded if another guy listened in on the call as well. Their suspicion of my reasons became apparent during the two hour call. It transpired my friend wasn't quite the mover and shaker he'd claimed. This had been the sole reason for taking him on board in the business. He spoke of his many powerful contacts in the Gulf and we had no reason to disbelieve him. His lifestyle was luxurious and indicated a good level of income.


How he made his living was none of my business but he had conned us, I felt. And now he wanted to take what little I had. I asked questions about him locally and the gossip I heard wasn't good. He was still living with his mother in Basildon in a bought corporation house. And not working. I'd long suspected his sexuality not that it mattered to me. There were stories of cottaging etc. he'd evidently gone to great pains to hide this from me though I would have understood. I'm not judgmental or narrow-minded.


So he obviously had a great deal of time on his hands to try to get a decent living out of us, which was dangerous for me. during the next three months I gathered more and more information about him. Eventually I presented my evidence, neatly bound, at my solicitors office in Chelmsford. And waited for the response from his solicitors with some anxiety.


She rang me a short while later, she thought she'd ring rather than send a letter as it was quicker. His solicitors on seeing the evidence I'd prepared dropped all the charges. I was so elated at this news. Now I could move on with my life.


After the stint at British Rail finishes I get another temp job. The hourly rate is better. It's at BP oil refineries in Coryton. The first time I drive down the approach it seems Orwellian and sinister. Huge oil tanks and pipelines everywhere. The women in the office are friendly enough though the work is crushingly boring. How do people bear typing all day for years on end? I sit at the desk and gaze longingly across the marshes to hill where I live. I ache to be back there. The minutes drag interminably.


For lunch we get a staff minibus down into the bowels of the refineries. The sight of which is jaw-dropping. Richard Rogers must have been here for inspiration for his magnificent Lloyds building in the City. Massive steel pipes snake in and out of huge tanks of highly combustible oil. There is a great sense of malevolence.


 After lunch I tell the girls I want a fag. 'Is anyone else coming?' I ask but there are no takers. I find that a bit odd but go outside anyway. No-one is allowed to smoke anywhere, not for hundreds of yards. There is a small wooden hut for the smokers, I enter it and see several men huddled inside on wooden benches. A wall of stale cigarette smoke hits me. There are several bins with wet sand for the fag ends. I take one very uncomfortable drag and put it out. On my hasty return to the restaurant all the women are laughing. My heady initiation into the jet-setting world of the oil industry.


We are shown a safety video and find it amusing to see Lewis Collins – formerly of Bodie and Doyle fame 'the Professionals' - taking part as one of the workers. How the mighty have fallen I think to myself: that makes two of us. And ironically reflect on how a few years ago I was mixing with the hierarchy of the Oil business, now I'm at the bottom. But watching it beats pounding a typewriter for a blessed half an hour.


But it pays well and tides me over until the next job materializes.


I'm cut off socially and living in suburbia see this situation isn't going to change any time soon. I wonder about bar work. The money would be crap but it might broaden my social horizons socially. First place I try is Boyce Hill Golf Club. The manageress looks me up and down disapprovingly and probably - in hindsight - suspiciously too. Did she think I was looking for a rich guy? She may have been partly right.


She tells me about the strict dress code. No low-cut tops, no short skirts. but what really threw me was her insistence that I wouldn't be allowed to address the members unless they spoke to me first. I walk out in disgust.


I never knew what a social pariah I would become, being a single woman again in our old crowd of friends. Amazingly Bill was still included in party invites, that made me feel even worse. I'd been the life and soul before and very popular. But they may have had a point, one of our male friends started coming round unexpectedly. This was no great surprise, he'd often dropped by in the past. But began to feel it was different this time. He suggested we all meet up at a local club. He called to pick me up and was surprised to find he was on his own.


He said she would be following on shortly. So we order drinks and chat away merrily. After an hour and still no sign of her I ask him if anything is wrong. He tells me they've had a row and she went for him with a knife. This I laugh at as know she wouldn't do anything like that. So demand that we go over to their house as I want to see her. It's patently obvious he had planned it and had no intention of her coming at all.


Whether us breaking up struck some cord in his male menopausal brain will never know but when he started joking about us both getting a divorce and maybe we could get a discount. Maybe people start to wonder about their lives and think, 'is this is all there is? 'Decided it was time to call a halt on our friendship, sad as I was as I liked them both, for the good of their marriage. But if I'd given him so much as an inch of rope…..


Some time after, they arrive on my doorstep with something to tell me. They take a seat and she announces she has Cancer. I reel at this news not least because she is so calm as she talks about it. She goes on to say it's aggressive, in the breast, and will undergo surgery in three weeks time. A full mastectomy. I can't quite take it in. The surgery is successful and they move up North.


Another job crops up that looks interesting. A part-time post at Runwell Mental Hospital, working for a Dr Clive Bruton, the eminent Neuropathologist. The job looks interesting and different. The wages were abysmal. £3 per hour. Plus travelling time. The travelling involves driving to various secure hospitals for the criminally insane such as Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth.


I remember sitting in the bizarrely decorated waiting room, shelf upon shelf of varying sizes of pickled brains. I remember looking at them in some distaste and wondering what macabre stories they could tell. And the nurse who looked furtive and moved much in the manner of 'Mrs Overall'. After being seated opposite his desk for the interview, he seemed quite shy, unable to look me in the eye, with just the occasional barely discernable twitch of the eye. I'm reminded of Herbert Lom and try not to laugh. Mum always reckoned the staff who worked at Runwell Hospital were crazier than the patients. Perhaps it's just a case of over-familiarity. A bit like owners starting to look like their dogs.


What gave the job a different slant was that on the back seat on my return journey, bobbing about in a bell jar of formaldehyde would be the freshly removed brains of a recently dead inmate. I had a mental picture of driving on the M25 and the said brain, which may have been the orchestrator of appalling crimes, throbbing like mad.


This would join the many thousands in the brain bank used for research into Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, Depression and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and the pathological effects of Boxing, at the Pathology and Neurophysiology Unit (pictured), Runwell Hospital and for which his research was universally acclaimed.


Coincidentally, it was he who conducted the post-mortem on my beautiful niece Marie, my brother Alan's eldest daughter who died in such an inexplicable, sudden and tragic way at her school King John on Friday 13^th October at 10am.


Six months on, Alan felt he could finally cope with talking to him about his daughter's untimely death and subsequent findings. But before he has the opportunity Dr Bruton is killed in a car accident on the notorious by-pass at Rawreth. Just before his death he was about to submit findings regarding a new strain of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease. He had been publicly arguing that deaths from CJD were going unrecognised because it was assumed that Alzheimer disease - which has indistinguishable symptoms - was the cause.


In between my temping jobs I decide to see if I can utilise my arty skills selling barge painted wares. These I paint myself. Painting on various metal pots and pans I've picked up at boot fairs. The idea is to sell them. But it doesn't seem to fly out. At some fairs I sell nothing at all and has cost me the table space so out of pocket, plus getting up at 5am to get there. It's all demoralizing and dispiriting.


Alan my brother, who was very supportive though this period, suggests I take some of his stock with me on the next fair to see how I do with it. I take a few patchwork quilts, some lovely pieces of lace and various odds and ends. I take a stand at a fare in Pitsea and to my delight I sell most of his stock but none of my barge-ware. That is how I started on the long and wonderful journey to where I am now.


Gradually I build up a stock of patchwork quilts and lace tablecloths, doilies etc and go on the road selling. I try everything and anything to sell them. Increasing my sales area, it seems the further north I go the better I seem to do.


Armed with renewed vigour and encouragement I buy a second-hand trailer for the car and start driving around the local counties, Essex, Hertfordshire and Suffolk. Along the way I'd stop off and mooch around various towns and villages. During one of these stops I come across the Antique Bedstead Company at Gt Baddow near Chelmsford. It's run by Ian and I ask him if I can display my quilts on his beds. He agrees. It works out well for both of us and over the next twenty years he sends a great many of his customers to me.


My next venture is into Long Melford in Suffolk, without my knowing it would be the means by which my life would change inexorably. The first time I arrived in the small town made famous by the writer Jonathan Gash and his books 'Lovejoy' and subsequent television series, it was noticeable for two reasons, a dearth of women and a preponderance of fit, tanned and stylishly dressed good-looking men. I rang my friend Sue and told her, 'I've cracked it'.


I stumble across Melford Antique Warehouse, run by David Edwards. It is a huge emporium of both antique and repro furniture. I set up a display there and the guys sell my quilts on commission. As is my way , I chat to the them all, curious to find a lot of them originate from Soho. Formerly working in the Colony Rooms, that infamous watering hole of such legends as Jeffrey Barnard, Francis Bacon, George Melly, Dylan Thomas, Lucien Freud, Dan Farson, the list is endless and I'm in awe of the stories. It seems a far cry from the bucolic but staid idyll that Suffolk represents and am curious to know what brought them there.


Dad comes with me on these pretty rural jaunts, he loves the traditional tea shop at the end of the high street run by a local woman with huge bosom and a bustling cheerful disposition and always orders the same thing, her wonderful freshly-made bread pudding which he raves about. She's also a great source of local gossip which I love to hear in her rich rural dialect.


A few months in I'm invited to a charity bash at David's house. I ask Bill along because I don't know any other single available men, don't want to go on my own and suspect it may be a good do. I wasn't disappointed. My god, the house was impressive. A manor house stunningly decorated and furnished with exquisite items, everything perfectly positioned. There was a startling lack of toys or children in evidence. Or anything remotely resembling day-to-day detritus. I notice what looks like a Stubbs painting on the fireplace breast. There are so many beautiful artefacts in every room it's hard to take it all in but one thing I do know. There's some serious money here and can't believe it's from antiques.


There were some amazing cars Bentleys, vintage cars, ferrari's etc in the adjacent field, set up as a makeshift car park. Also a fabulous walled garden. Immaculately trimmed topiary, with a huge marquee in the middle of all this horticultural wonder, resplendent with massive glittering chandeliers. And wow, butlers serving champagne that look suspiciously like the guys at the warehouse, I noted with some relief.


There were some very illustrious people present, although I was just an oik from Essex I held court in my own inimitable fashion and was happy to tell a chappie who was enquiring what the name of fruit grown against walls was called, 'espalier' I jumped in cheekily before running off to get a refill from the 'butlers'.


Needing the loo, I bound off into the house and along a back corridor as instructed. When I come out I stop to admire some of the many prints on the wall. On closer inspection realize they're not prints but originals. I'm no art expert but positive they are the works of Francis Bacon and there are dozens there. I run up and down excitedly, hardly daring to touch, just staring at them in disbelief. There is no security camera that I can see and think perhaps I'm mistaken. I whisper to Bill to go check them out on his way to the bog. I make a mental note to find out more later on – from the best source – the tea shop lady.


Meanwhile we fell into conversation with a very grand 'old school' couple, the sort of characters you might have found in a Somerset Maugham novel, he was something big in the Ministry of whatever and reminded me of an older, grander version of Stephen Fry. A Whitehall mandarin. And his wife was outgoing and vibrant, they were both very friendly and indulgent. She gave me her business card and an invite to stay at their place in Wales.


Although sadly, I never saw them again but about a year later Bill's contract co-incidentally took him to the same village where they lived. I gave him the card and suggested he look her up. After visiting her a couple of times, she set him up on a blind date with an American friend of hers, they hit it off famously and were together for a couple of years. She was a brilliant artist and had led an incredible life, her ex-husband was a bond trader, whom the character Gordon Gekko was based on, in the film 'Wall Street' and was renowned, having painted murals for the Beach Boys and other American icons of the past, for her art work. She painted Bill in her superb water-colour style as well as giving him a couple of other paintings. I still love to look at them.


The next week Dad and I visit the warehouse to change the quilt displays and stop off at the tea shop. I mention what I've seen to her and she tells me that David's brother was Francis Bacons' lover John Edwards and when he died he left his entire estate to him. I was completely overwhelmed by this story and asked David about it when I next saw him. He confirmed it and said I could go back to the house whenever I liked to look at the paintings again. Such was the decency and unpretentiousness of this family and can understand why Frances Bacon fell for him, surrounded as he must have been by hangers-on and sycophants.


As the months go by develop a real passion for Suffolk and love driving backwards and forwards every week. Particularly in the spring and summer. I'm completely overwhelmed by everyones help and support in my travels around this lovely county.


One week I cut across and head for the coast, stopping eventually in Woodbridge, a pretty coastal town. There is a large hotel there built on Elizabethan style but Edwardian in reality. It's a little run-down but it hosts an antique fair and am keen to set up shop there for the day. the woman who runs it is a bit of a character and we get on really well. I hire a sizable room annexed to the main hall and am staggered how well I do. Things are definitely looking up.


Woodbridge is close to the US air bases so there are a few American airmen as customers as well as the locals. And Americans love patchwork of course. to my amazement she asks nothing for the rent of the room, even though I know the last dealers who rented it paid £100, such is the generosity of the people I meet.


Alan my brother is deputy MD of a company up north. they are taking a short term let - three months - on an old retail building in Southend high street and he asks me if I'd be interested in running the unit helped by one of his staff manageresses Lyn. I'm terrified at the the prospect, its a huge unit with staffing levels of at least 20 people. And an expected high turnaround of very cheap stock. which means continual re-stocking and therefore highly labour intensive.


However, this does also give both Toby and Celia work so could be financially beneficial for the whole family and we could travel in together which would save fuel costs.


when I go to look at the unit it's enormous, maybe 5,000 sq ft on the ground floor. It's very run down but as it's a short term let there's little refit. Just the bare minimum. I struggle greatly in the first few weeks, the first job is interviewing potential staff which I have no experience of at all. Fortunately Lyn has been in retail her whole life and has good gut reactions.


The quality of people we take on is poor, the wages are very basic, minimum wage. So can't really expect too much but even I had a shock at their behaviour. When they weren't nicking the stock they were stealing off each other. And the lifestyles left a lot to be desired,  some of the girls would turn up for work with bruised faces, they had aggressive boyfriends with tattoo's and bad attitudes.


However, it was a huge success, no-one ever got rich by over-estimating public taste, think Oscar may have said that. But saw it for myself in spades. We took thousands every week, no credit cards, all cash. The busiest day was Thursday, Giro day. It was all a huge learning curve for me. It wasn't unknown to be carrying £15,000 to the bank which meant having two male minders each time. Southend was and as far as I know still is quite a rough, crime -ridden area and that amount was worth getting attacked for,  there were many local thugs who roamed the high st menacingly later in the day.


It is hammered into me to take great care with security and cash. At the end of the day, the routine was always the same, I would pull the car round to the front of the building which meant driving onto the pedestrianised front, then lock up from the front, pulling down the huge metal shutters that protected the shop windows.


One time I pulled away, I had four of the lads from the shop in the car, including my son Toby. I must have been followed for about a mile as we came into Westcliff when suddenly the police car that had been following me, having seen me drive on the pavement in Southend, suddenly started putting on their sirens and flashing lights, instructing me to pull over.


I get out of the car, knowing full well the police can only see four strapping youths with long hair in the car, and stride towards them. Their face is a picture, a middle-aged woman in a pin-striped suit was clearly not what they were expecting. I relish the moment. I explain about the security reasons for driving on the pedestrianised part and enquire if they want to see my documentation. They decline.


Getting back in the car the boys all exclaim in unison  'fucking 'ell,  can't believe you got away with that,  if that'd been us we'd 'ave been nicked'. Which was true as my son was plagued constantly by the police for several years. There's not many bonuses to being mature but that surely has to be one of them.


After the loveliness of Suffolk and the gentleness of the people who lived there this is a massive culture shock. But know Alan is trying to help me and probably need the experience - as well as the money which is quite generous. In all the three months I work there I barely acknowledge any of the staff,  which is not at all like me as I'm quite a gregarious person. Most are impossible to have any sort of reasonable conversation with and have little in common with most of them. As I didn't possess a television  was utterly lost on what they were talking about,. mostly programs which seemed to be their sole topic of conversation.


I keep my head down and know it won't be forever. I struggle with the running of it,  the constant shelf-filling, the horrible 50p tat,  and with the staff who are often trouble along with their boyfriends. We have to deal with threats and theft almost every week. And constant shoplifting from customers, it does become a nightmare and start to dread going in. Plus both Toby and Celia would disappear into the many nooks and crannies of this vast old Victorian building smoking joints, which of course didn't garner any respect for me from the staff, who knew what was going on.


Several times the directors would descend on us and it would be Alan who would give me a dressing down if he wasn't happy with what was going on. So tensions began to arise between us. I felt both humiliated and not in control of what I was doing so my confidence began to plummet even further.


But gradually towards the end, some sort of camaderie began to develop between us all. and when we finally lost the unit having to sack everyone was truly painful.  We took all the girls out for dinner and it was very emotional for all of us. It was a very painful learning curve for me, knew one thing for sure. Whatever I was going to do, my future didn't lay in this type of retailing, no matter how much money it took each week.  I would never run a shop.


I now had a bit of money in the bank, not much but it gave some much needed security, so back to safe rural Suffolk. Near the tea room is a place selling French antique furniture, living in France they come over weekly with  various pieces. I chat to them and ask if I can display my quilts on their beds which they happily agree to. It transpires they used to live in Benfleet, amazingly just a few hundred yards from where I live. His name is John King. He tells me he has a brother called Richard who's just taken a double fronted shop in Leigh on Sea. He suggests I go to see him with a view to selling my quilts and accessories.


Richard is a larger than life character, he's involved in many different things, all massively interesting.  He runs the Volkswagon business in Hadleigh specialising in VW's old and new. Surprised to see Bauhaus furniture there and find he has a real passion and knowledge about design in all it's forms whether cars or interiors. A very talented  and personable guy.


I love the way he fits out the old-fashioned dress shop it formerly was: Janot House. He names the shop Brocante and does the building up in massive style. This is very exciting as it's so close to home. So now I have several venues showcasing my stock, this works very well. I leave my leaflets at all of them and they do produce lots of sales. My stock levels are growing and I have my showroom at home packed with stock as well.


One day instead of turning right towards home on the one-way system, for some unknown I turn right. This would change my life forever.........