Life and Times.
This is a photograph of me and my eldest daughter, she is thirty-two years old now. The photo was taken by her granddad on holiday in Spain. I had Emily when I was twenty-three. I had no plan for our lives, other than to be happy. The early years of my marriage and motherhood were lovely. We owned our house (well, with a mortgage) my husband had an excellent job in The City, and I was a stay-at-home mum. Me and Emily had a blissful couple of years. Then when I was pregnant with my second child, my husband lost his job and the recession kicked in. Our riches turned to poverty. Our freedoms turned into prisons. The prison of poverty and depression. My husband fell into a despair. But I had two young people to nurture. A lot of people were in the same boat, and we all helped each other out, some managed to stay strong while others fell by the wayside. Then circumstances picked up again and we were OK for a while. My husband chose to spend a lot of time in the pub, but that was ...