Where I live

In 1999 I was lucky enough to find this bungalow to rent and I've been here ever since. It was built in the middle of a field and is called 'Green Pastures'. It's in a very small village and I can't think of a better place to live, although our children probably wish we were not quite so much in the 'back of beyond'.

The bungalow itself is a bit run down and need of quite a lot of tlc, but our limited diy skills are enough to keep the inside looking fairly nice, although they don't extend to dealing with the rotten woodwork or structural problems on the outside. We just hope it'll stay standing and weatherproof long enough for us to stay here - preferably for ever!

Our 'garden', if you can call it that, is definitely a wildlife garden. I learned the first year I was here that it's almost impossible to grown anything as something will soon come along and eat it. The only thing that rabbits are guaranteed not to eat is daffodils. They eat almost everything else - flowers, herbs, shrubs, vegetables, grass, even prickly berberis - and they dig, oh yes, how they dig. It's a wonder no one's broken their ankle yet!

As well as rabbits, there are hedgehogs, squirrels and deer that come to visit our garden. The squirrels are the second worst pest after the rabbits as they dig everything up, whether they want to eat it or not, and plants things in my tubs, disturbing the plants and bulbs I've put in there. They used to eat all the food I put out for the birds, or chew through the feeders and let everything fall to the ground, but I've managed to defeat them with baffles which fit on the feeder poles.

We have lots of different birds here and more come to visit the feeders now that we've stopped the squirrels destroying them and now that our cat is too old to bother about them. There are blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, gold finches, robins, blackbirds, thrushes and starlings and we also see pheasants, partridges and the occasional duck or chicken.

When I first moved here there were two beautiful cockerels in residence. They'd been here for years and were very friendly. Sadly, the neighbours didn't share my enthusiasm and weren't very keen on being woken by them crowing in the early hours of the morning and they very mysteriously vanished while we were away on holiday one summer. We thought a fox had got them, as there were some feathers left behind. It was only recently, when we had someone round to get rid of a wasp's nest for us, that he said he remembered coming here before to get rid of some cockerels who were disturbing the neighbours. I wish I knew which neighbours it was!

Along with the cockerels there were several groups of chickens who lived in the garden from time to time. We live near 'chicken roundabout' which has been on the news several times. No one knows how the chickens came to be there. One theory is that a lorry overturned and some chickens escaped, another is that some gypsies let some loose. No one knows - but there are lots of them and opinion is very much divided between those who like them and/or feed them and those who think they're a danger to the traffic or an germ spreading menace. I say 'live and let live' but then I love nature. Back to the resident chickens, we named some of the more long term lodgers and they became quite tame, waiting by the door for us to feed them seed and scraps.

The two most memorable chickens were Hopalong and Muncher. Hopalong must have broken his foot at some time as it was turned over making it very difficult for him to walk, let alone run. My daughters adopted him as their pet and we let him sleep in the front porch and took a lot of care of him while the break healed and he learned to walk again. If we went out anywhere he would rush out to meet us on our return until, sadly, the dog next door leapt over the fence and grabbed him, breaking his neck, as we drove up the drive one afternoon. The girls were horrified!

Muncher was another tame chicken, or cockerel and he lived here after Paul and the boys had moved in. He was more Paul's pet than ours and he would come when he was called. He stayed for some time, but then moved on - maybe he found somewhere with more food or better scraps, or maybe he was just lured away by a pretty chicken!

The deer that come into the garden from time to time are Muntjac deer. We don't see them very often as they're so shy but, occasionally, we've seen them standing still and - guess what - eating the plants that the rabbits are too short to nibble! They seem to eat almost anything too, and also damage the trees by stripping the bark off.

Although I'd love to have a small, enclosed garden where I could grow things and make it look orderly and pretty, I can manage without that as the reward of seeing all our garden visitors more than makes up for it.

Today is Mother's Day and it's a beautiful one. I celebrated yesterday with my daughters and spent the day with them. We had a meal here and they gave me some presents: tulips, a silver heart charm and some smellies. Julia helped with the meal: pasta bake and Cathy made me a belated birthday chocolate cake with the most amazing chocolate icing. In the afternoon Cathy drove us to Great Yarmouth and we looked around Matalan, Tesco and Next before she dropped Julia at her boyfriend's house and I met his parents for the first time. Cathy then brought me home, before going to her boyfriend's house to get ready for their evening out.

Today I've been thinking about my Mum. I can't believe it's 10 years since she died, the time has passed so quickly. I was sorting out some information which my step-mother gave me recently and reading about things connected to Mum still brings tears to my eyes. I suppose it always will!

My Mum was a wonderful woman, although it took me a while to realise it. When I became a mother we had something in common and found it much easier to get on, before that I hadn't always had a good relationship with her, or my Dad.

Mum first had cancer when she was 17. She went to the Doctor's and he told her to go away and get on with her life instead of worrying about things like cancer. He said there was nothing wrong with her and she was imagining things. By the time she was diagnosed with cancer it had grown and she had to have a tumour in her groin removed and the lymph gland removed in her leg. She was then told not to have children.

Mum met Dad, they fell in love and got married. Then, luckily for me, they had a baby. When I was born by Caesarian section, the doctors discovered that the cancer had returned. She was not expected to live more than a few months and was given massive doses of radiation therapy, which caused her major problems for the rest of her life.

After I was born, Mum set herself goals. She decided she would live long enough to wean me onto a bottle. Next she decided she would live long enough to get me onto solid foods. Then she decided she would live long enough to see me walk. Although walking was very difficult for her, she was able to watch me walk down the road on my first day at school. Somehow her positive outlook enabled her to have more than 40 years which the Doctors had never expected her to have, although she had several more encounters with cancer over the years and, in the end it was cancer which killed her in 1999, at the age of 64.

Instead of giving in to her ill health and disabilities, Mum kept herself active and busy. She had to give up her job as a Nursery School Teacher before I was born, but for the rest of her life she worked from home as a dressmaker and tailoress. She was always sewing, knitting, making something or recovering something and it must have been frustrating to her that I was useless at all these things! As a teenager I designed my clothes and she made them, a great improvement on the matching things we wore when I was younger and she made me a dress from the left over material after she'd made herself one. Later she made me curtains and cushion covers and, later still, an advent calendar, toys, rag dolls and clothes for her grandchildren.

I never knew her to complain about the pain she was in for much of her life. If I phoned her and asked how she was, the answer was always the same: "very well thank you." Sometimes, when I thought about it, I felt guilty for moaning about a headache or a stomach ache, when I realised that she was in pain every single day.

Mum managed to stay mobile for most of the time. Although the Doctors couldn't understand how she was able to walk as the damage to her spine was so severe and there had been complications with her 'bad' leg, on which she'd had several operations over the years. Every time they wanted her to have it amputated she would reply "that's my leg you're talking about" and turn them down. She managed to ride a bike, learn to drive and had a specially adapted car with some hand controls. Every day she tried to walk somewhere, however hard it was and however painful it felt. Her house was always spotless, the garden was always immaculate, her sewing jobs always finished on time and she still found time to write a book, write letters to her friends and relatives and spend time with her grandchildren as well as supporting Dad in his work, his writing and his marathon running.

Her last cancer went undetected until it was inoperable. Again, she went to see the Doctor and again she was told that there was nothing to worry about. She was diagnosed as having IBS. By the time they found out it was bowel cancer the operation and treatment that she had were not enough to get rid of it completely. Although Mum and Dad didn't tell us that she was terminally ill, I mentioned her to my own Doctor who asked if I realised that it was palliative care that she was receiving.

I planned a wonderful Christmas Day for what I thought was to be her last Christmas but, in fact, she celebrated another 5 with her family. Again, she never complained and seemed so well and happy that we almost forgot about it at times and it was a shock when she died. Looking back, I think she'd just had enough of fighting it every day and wondering which part of her was going to be the next to stop working. There's no doubt that the last 6 years of her life, although possibly the happiest, were also the most painful and difficult for her.

I'm so glad that Dad had retired and that he and Mum were able to do all the things she wanted to do. They went on a wonderful trip around the USA and saw, among other things, The Grand Canyon, Disneyworld and Las Vegas. They visited all their relatives and friends. They did lots of research on the family tree and travelled all over England looking at memorials in churchyards and records in libraries. Mum was busy doing things right up to the end of her life.

Now, ten years on, I still miss her and so do the rest of her family. We miss her smile, her optimism, her courage and her determination. I miss phoning her to tell her about birds I've seen in the garden or flowers that have appeared. I miss the sound of her voice and sometimes I can't quite remember how it sounded. When I'm trying to mend things or a button comes off something, I miss her sewing skills!

I might miss her, but I'll never forget her. Happy Mother's Day Mum, wherever you are.