So… Umm, so I think I’m- Yes I came back from Austria. Oh we did quite a lot of traveling as well around the area, we did some hitching. Went to have a first experience of hitching to see what it was like, because we didn’t have any money so we had to hitch home. Um, hitch back to England. That was an interesting experience, sitting at the docks begging to get the fare across to um, on the boat because we didn’t have the money at all. And when we got back to Britain, of course the currency system had changed, so that was also a bit of a muddle. Anyway then… umm… But do you- sorry- did you learn German when you were a speaker- an au pair? Yes I learnt it very well, yeah. Well, I learnt it very quickly, not very well. I learnt to speak- it’s quite interesting actually- because um, one day Johannes- that’s the little boy- he was two, he had his second birthday while I was there, and I had my nineteenth birthday while I was there. And um, Johannes’ mother got rather annoyed one day about something, I don’t remember what, and in her frustration she said to me: ‘and Johannes is speaking German with an English accent and you’re speaking baby German!’ And I hadn’t realised that, sort of, because we were learning from each other, so words that I would use were words that children would use, and of course I had no idea. So I might have said something like ‘Ooh look at that bow-wow over there!’ to an adult, not realising that ‘bow-wow’ was a child’s word. (Laughs). Of course, in German, you know, but um that’s the sort of examples that’s quite entertaining really. No I was very proud of myself how quickly I picked the language up, because I didn’t speak it at all before I went, apart from just a few basic words I’d learned like ‘hello’ ‘please’ ‘thank you’, and I did pick it up very very quickly indeed um, on a conversational basis, not on a good grammar basis. And I got, did very well so… Was that through living with the family and speaking with the- Well I started learning it before, before it got into the family really. Um, just something I decided to do, just something I was good at at the time is picking up sound and you know, learning from that so that was interesting, um. And sometimes, like it’s some of it can still come back to me I think if I went to Germany- well, I have been back- although Austrian is a much softer language than German, but um, yes it’s, it was interesting. And also I had to speak a lot of French as well, when I was first there because people we bumped into who didn’t speak English, so we communicated in French. In fact I had um, a boyfriend while I was there; he was Czechoslovakian, a Czechoslovakian refugee. We had to communicate to each other in German, because I didn’t speak Czech, and he didn’t speak English (laughs). So that was quite interesting, but a great experience and certainly set me on the road for being a traveller. [0:03:10] So came back to Britain, very very tired and exhausted from the hitch, they sleep uh, for about 48 hours, um. I can’t remember what I did then, but the plan then was going to college again, and this time because I was motivated to have a purpose for it, um I did very well. And I did my A Levels, uh didn’t get into university because you have to apply before you get the results, and based on my previous, sort of educational background it didn’t look like I would’ve been a good candidate, so I thought: ‘What am I going to do?’, and what I haven’t explained is that, um, when I was sixteen before I went to the first college, and again when I was eighteen before I went to my second college, I um, I’d always wanted to work with animals. And all my life, um, from the age of about four probably, um when anyone asked me what I was going to do when I grew up I always said I was going to, I wanted to be a vet. But unfortunately, the school I went to was such that we didn’t do the science subjects, so I’ve never done chemistry or physics in my entire life. Did do biology, but it wasn’t until I was about fourteen I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to be a vet. Well certainly, not at that stage. Um, and that was like, very very disheartening. [0:05:00] Loved animals, always loved animals. Became a vegetarian when I was eleven, which in those -days was very unusual, and was very tough, and my mother was fantastic, and she put herself through a lot of difficult times, a lot of criticism from people, um because she was allowing me to be a vegetarian and this wasn’t a socially acceptable thing to do before the Flower Power movement and the hippie movement, so you can probably imagine as soon as those things started, (big sigh) I was in my element. I’d come home, there were other people, weird people out there like, you know sort of it was a wonderful feeling of belonging, which I hadn’t really experienced that much before. But I had applied to work in a, a-um, etc. There was a Burroughs and Wellcome just down the road from us and I applied to work, or got the application form I should say to work in their laboratory, so I could work with animals, and there was just a little- I was a bit innocent then, I didn’t really know, what was- what it meant. But there was a bit of me that thought: ‘I’m sure that’s not going to be a good idea.’ And twice I had that thought. Well the first time was before going to college for the first time, and the second time was when my friend said: ‘No no. You don’t want to apply there; we’re going to go travelling.’ So I thought: ‘Great! Okay.’ Tore it up, off we went travelling. You might want to put it on the other side, um because there it’ll just- Feels like it’s burning actually. Really? Can’t be. [0:06:31] Do you want me to- let’s just- Okay. Carry on. Um, so you went away travelling, was that the- No I’ve been, well- That’s been a year- So I’m back at college now, um. The second college, doing A Levels, doing very well, oh yes, and I didn’t get into university. So… that’s right I was saying that I’d always wanted to work with animals, and I went to the careers advisor at this particular college I was at, and um, she said: ‘Well, what would you like to do?’ and I thought: ‘Well, I’d quite like to work with children, so she said: ‘Okay, well there’s- you can do A, B, or C.’, which is go down to the local children’s home and talk to them, I did that. Um, and they said: ‘Well, why don’t you go to your local social services and talk to them?’, so I did that. And I remember talking to this woman, um in social services. (Is it working?) And she suddenly had a phone call while she was talking to me, and she said: ‘I can’t talk now I’m interviewing!’ And I thought: ‘Oh gosh, am I in an interview?’ and at the end of that, she offered me a choice of three different jobs. And that set me on my social work career path. So, I then applied for university again, and got in. Um, so I had this job for a year, working in a children’s home, which was- in those days it was called an assessment, observation and assessment centre, which had like the element of psychology that I was so attracted to, where you were making assessments and looking at people’s backgrounds and things, with a view to making recommendations, so that was a very good basis for me to go off and do my Psychology and Philosophy degree, which is what I applied to do. Um. Now the university I went to was Keele, and in those days they had this absolutely wonderful opportunity where you did a foundation year, which wasn’t part of the degree. And in that foundation year, you had a taste of every subject that the university offered. Um, you had general lectures that went through a whole program throughout the year, and then you had smaller groups that you specialised in, and you had to cover science, the social science and humanities in both those subjects. Um, and it was perfect for me, given that my educational background hadn’t been brilliant. It was like that’s where my education really started. Well I would say it really started at my second college when I did sociology, and suddenly the world started to make sense to me, and I thought: ‘Right, that’s it.’ Now, I applied to do Psychology and Philosophy, but I found the Philosophy wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be, I thought it would be sitting there philosophising, but no it was like a history thing where you learnt about other philosophers. Fair enough, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do at the time. So I switched, and I did a Psychology and Sociology degree, and it was fantastic, absolutely wonderful. My time at Keele was the most amazing time of my life up till then, it really was spectacular. Um, I also got a scholarship to go to the States for a year. So my degree spanned out into a five year process instead of a three year process because the college I went to in the States which the university paid for, um. The person who came over to Keele was able to count that as part of his degree because of the way the American system of education worked, but the- but when I was over there it didn’t count as part of my degree, because in Britain we went deep into a, a very narrow sort of route whereas the States, they went on the surface, across a very broad spectrum for the degree, and here was I having the opportunity of this year to go on the broad spectrum, but it couldn’t really count as part of my degree in England. So I could do whatever I wanted, and that’s when I did things like 20th Century Art History, err 20th Century German Literature, the History of the Cinema, History of Photography, and a practical course in photography, and that’s when I learnt photography, and I absolutely loved it. I didn’t enjoy being in the States at all. Whereabouts were you? [0:11:31] Uh, Philadelphia. A college called Swarthmore College, which was a bit too posh for me really, to be honest, it was very academic, very privileged students, most of the people, and I just didn’t like the sort of, the culture. I came from a, a really quite radical university at the time to this very sort of um, much more straight laced sort of academic institution, where um the law was that you couldn’t have alcohol till you were 21, so there was no alcohol on the premises, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing but it was just so different from the freedom and the sort of drug culture, and alcohol culture um, alternative culture that I was used to- Hmm. -at the university I was at which was referred to by local people as ‘Little Moscow on the Hill’. So there was quite a contrast, but I did get a lot out of it by learning photography and I learnt so much about so many exciting things, and I suppose that’s where my interest in art, really, was able to manifest, because at school I had been squashed. Um, the school I went to wasn’t interested in art at all, wasn’t seen as a serious subject, and that was reflected by the fact in one term alone we had three different teachers, because they would get fed up and go, and the idea of art at the school I was at was holding a, doing a still life drawing and I hated it. Even now today if I hold a pencil I clench it and I still feel that frustration and anger of being made to do these drawings that I didn’t want to do. Given a paintbrush and some paint, I’d be well away, but that was squashed out of me. And at the um, for the O level, the board, examining board gave a choice of a still life drawing, or an imaginative painting. And I remember arguing with my headmaster and saying: ‘Well I want to do the imaginative painting.’ And they said: ‘Well we’re not going to have a special exam just for you.’, but nobody was given the choice; we were all made to do the live drawing. And I got the lowest grade it’s possible to get. (Laughs), um. And it just stopped me from doing anything arty for, yeah it was. I think it was inside me, but it was just totally repressed. So it started to manifest, I started to have an outlet in photography. And I really took off in photography and it was fantastic and I loved it, and I came back to England, and finished my degree. Um, but all my spare time I was doing photography, and, but then the travel bug had got me as well, so so far I’d been to Austria, and I’d lived for a year in the States, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted something more exciting, more adventurous. I’d always wanted to go to India. Um, so, I had plans to go to India with some friends, but that all fell through, and at that point in my life I didn’t have the- this is after my degree- I didn’t feel confident enough to go off on my own, at that point, to India. Um, I was very tempted and I looked at overland trails, and if I had gone when I’d considered it, I would have been in Afghanistan at the time when the Russian invasion happened, so I almost regret, a little bit of me regrets not having done it when I did, when I could have done because obviously the world is a different place now, and certain opportunities that were available then, door are now closed, um, so I’ve never been to countries like Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran, or places like that. But what I did do, what a boyfriend at the time, he found out some information for me about some voluntary work that was available in Jerusalem, working in a hospital for children with disabilities, and I thought: ‘That sounds perfect. I’m halfway to India, um, I won’t be on my own, cause I’ll be, you know, I can meet people there, I’m bound to meet someone who wants to come to India, you know, wants to go off to India with.’ So I ended up applying to do that voluntary work and got accepted, though unfortunately, um, there was a six month delay between my application and the space being available, so I ended up going back to office work. No I didn’t that’s not true I worked in a children’s home. That’s what I did, [00:16:31] I got a job at a children’s home. And I’d worked in elderly people’s home, and I’d worked in places for people with learning difficulties whilst I was a student, because I had to work to- I also worked at the bar in the student union and worked in the library, I sort of had to work to earn some money. Um, to try and get me through university as much as possible. Got a full grant for a couple of years, but not for the other two years. And my parents weren’t in a position to help at the time. So, um, that was when I started working in social work. Well, I’d already done that the previous year. So I had these two balls that were being juggled, the sort of um, photography, or the social work. And then I also had the traveller. So I went with the traveller, and um, I went to Jerusalem, and I ended up being away from Britain on that occasion for nineteen months. Um, did my work for seven months in the voluntary work, met a man who I ended up living with, and we ended up living in Jerusalem working in catering. Um, we travelled to Cyprus, and then that relationship needed to end, and a friend of mine from England who I had met at Keele came out and joined me, and we travelled to Egypt and Turkey and, um, had a fantastic three months and spent time in Greece as well. Um, living on mouldy melons and carrion and prickly pears after we had run out of money, and couldn’t, you know, it’s what you do when you’re younger. (Laughs) Um, yeah it was absolutely fantastic that trip, but I didn’t get to India. Came back to Britain, and thought: ‘Where am I going to live now?’ I had no idea, so I just ended up going back with my friend, and ended up living in London. Got work again for an agency in a children’s home again, and then I thought: ‘Well, okay. I’m at a crossroads.’ Do I try and apply to Art College and go to Art College and do photography, and have a career in photography? Or do I go down this other road, and go to college and stu- train as a profession- you know, a social worker and get my social work qualification, and have a career in social work? And it was quite a big crossroads, and I had to make a decision, because clearly I couldn’t do both. And I chose the social work career, and the reason for that is because I thought: ‘Well, if I train as a photographer, what job am I going to have? How am I going to earn a living?’ I didn’t have the personality to be a photojournalist, or I didn’t think I did. You have to be really brilliant to be an art photographer, and you know, in the meantime how do you earn a living where you’re getting to that point, if you do? And I could only at that time think that the sort of career I’d have would be taking photographs of people’s babies or weddings, and I thought: ‘No way do I want to be doing that.’ And I thought it would take away the pleasure for me of the art of the photography. And subsequently in life, if I had my time again, maybe I could have been a travel photographer, might have been an interesting one. But because of all this I went down the social work route and that then was what I did, was what I became. And I was very fortunate for a long long time, because I often said to myself if I had my time again, I would probably still choose to be a social worker. I liked it; I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. It was a very very very very stressful job. Sometimes that was… how can I say…? Sometimes I almost, enjoy the drama of it. The. The… awful stuff of it. But when I did my degree- my master’s degree, and my professional degree to qualify in social work, I specialised, I did my dissertation on child sexual abuse, and at that time it hadn’t… It wasn’t sort of um, everyday talk. It was something that was hidden under the carpet, and there was very very little written about it, very very little- I’m talking about the very early 1980’s now- and very very little information, and what was happening was in the 70’s, a lot of women were going to Rape Crisis Lines, when Rape Crisis Line started up, [00:21:31] and rather than talking about having been raped a few days ago, or whatever, they were talking about having been raped in childhood. Talked about childhood sexual abuse. And that’s when sexual abuse started to become more known about. Obviously the pole who’d been abused knew all about it only too well, but when it became more, um, less swept under the carpet. And… this is very distressing stuff to be working with, uh, very distressing stuff to be learning about. And I ended up going down that road, and for quite a lot of my social work career doing specialist work with children who’d experienced being abused. And it had a toll on me personally, it um. I burnt out several times with it really, it was... too distressing, and yet I kept being attracted back to that work. And… I remember the first time I burnt out. It wasn’t enough for me to leave my job. I had to leave my job, my relationship, my home and the country. And that’s when I did get to India, made damn sure I got there this time by flying there. And I was away that trip for about fifteen months. And if anyone mentioned the word ‘social work’ to me where I was away, it was like a red rag to a bull, and I was never ever going to go back and be a social worker again. Never ever. Um. That was my most fantastic trip ever, that time in India. And Thailand and Nepal and Bali, and then going off to Australia. I had some injuries to deal with, I had a few accidents and ended up on- in plaster cast and crutches a few times, but that just made me stop really, I think it was my body’s way of saying: ‘You’ve got to stop.’ So, I came back from that trip, and I thought: ‘Well, I'm not going to be a social worker, no way.’ So I trained as a TEFL teacher, Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I trained as a massage therapist, uh and I went back to college and did- ooh, what I hadn’t said is that all the way through my social work career, I kept my hand in with art, and I did stained glass, which is something I’d always wanted to do, and I did that for years. Um, so I ended up doing a professional qualification in stained glass. So, all this time working, you know, still not being a social worker a lot of the time. But then I ended up having a job that just, presented itself to me, that was tailor-made for me personally. It was in social work, but it was perfect for me. Half-time job, and I went for it, I went down that road. So there I was back in social work again. Um, and it was fine, except working part time wasn’t enough, and I ended up getting another part time job, which was doing individual work with children who’d been sexually abused pretty well. And I enjoyed it, and it was frustrating, and it was distressing, and it was me, it was what I did. So I had these two bits of my life, which was the stained glass, and the distressing social work, but also the rewarding social work. And I went along that road for a long long long long time, until burnout happened again. Big time. And then I got ill, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ME. I’d left doing the individual work with children, and gone into fostering and adoption by this time, where I was one step removed from doing the direct work, and I was working with adults who were doing the direct work. But it still had its stresses and its frustrations and its difficulties and sexual abuse still reared its ugly head several times in the process of that. And it was that that finally got me down, it was- I won’t go into that because of confidentiality, but there was something that happened in one of my- one of the situations I worked with, which was just too distressing for words. And, I just crashed basically. Got ill with a virus, never recovered from it. Diagnosis of ME. [00:26:31] How long ago was that? Five and a half years now. And never able to get back to social work. And that was tragic for me, because that was what I’d become, that was my life, it was why I hadn’t had my own children, it was um, it was who I was. So there’s a lot of loss with… that, a lot of loss of identity, a loss of me. My doctor said something quite amazing to me, he said: ‘You need to reinvent yourself’, and I really heard those words, and although the journey of losing all that stuff, losing being an earner, thought I was going to lose my home, which was terrible for me at the time. Um, very stressful things. Although the journey through the chronic fatigue and ME was really terrible for two- couple of years, there’s always a silver lining, there’s always an open door somewhere. One door has to close before another opens, and I think most experiences however awful they might be, can be turned on their head into something positive. And within that, was an opportunity to go into the art world, because, okay I couldn’t earn my living in social work, what could I do that I enjoy doing, that didn’t take too much out of me? And the answer was something arty. Couldn’t do the stained glass, because that was too much energy. So I ended up, um, doing art history, where I just sat and listened to all this fantastic, inspirational stuff. I ended up doing printing, which was very hard and very stretching for me, but I managed it. Somehow I managed it. Um, and the college I was at, at the time, Queen’s Road was very very good about helping, you know, giving me chances to rest and things like that. And then at Queen’s Road they had a summer school, um one year, in felt making, and I thought: ‘I want to do that. That sounds wonderful!’ And I did that summer school, and it was just amazing, and that was with Teresa Searle, um who teaches at Silai, or taught at Silai. And it’s very strange, it might seem very odd I think, the similarities between stained glass and felt making, but I felt that there were. Like, you’re playing with bits of material that are coloured, and putting them together, in a way. Although obviously glass is a very hard material, and wool is very soft material, there was that similarity, and I was in my element, because colour is something that I adore, and that is very important to me to be colourful and have lots of colour round me, as you can probably see. (Laughs) Um, so this was a fantastic opportunity, and then Teresa mentioned that she taught at this college called Silai, which I had never heard of in my life before. And I thought: ‘I’m going to look into that.’ And she taught this textile course. Now I’ve never been a sewer, I’ve always really disliked sewing. My friends have always done all my sewing for me. I’ve been very lucky. Sewing on a button, no. No thank you. Making clothes, no thank you. But doing something creative, that’s a different matter altogether. And, I enrolled at Silai; they were very very good about my disability needs, about needing to have a rest, um, you know, in the class, just, they gave me a room I could just go off to whenever I needed to just, blob out and shut the world away. And I got given a parking space. And there was this fantastic tutor, doing these amazing sorts of things with us, like, really wacky stuff, not conventional, sort of sewing. It was all very creative, it was all very unusual, and I was in my element, I just loved it to bits and we did things like paper making. Um, felting. Indigo dying, using the sewing machine as a drawing instrument, which I had never heard of before, and I’d never used a sewing machine before, and here was I- my friends couldn’t believe it when a friend of my mothers’ died, and left my mother some money, and my mother kindly shared it between my sister and I and herself. [00:31:31] And the first thing I did was go out and buy a sewing machine. (Laughs) Me, sewing machine? (Laughs) But yes, because suddenly I could use it in an arty way, um, and it just opened doors left, right and centre. Really loved it. And at the second year, um, unfortunately my mother died, and that’s very difficult, um, leading up to that, and I think it’s- I think the second year I probably hadn’t- I’ve done a lot of creative things in the course but I found it very hard to get the projects done on time, and other things took over, like trying to sort out my mother’s things and space like that. Um, but what I also found the second year was because my health was improved, I hadn’t needed to rest so much, so I’ve only needed to rest in the lunchtime and not take time out of the class. But I did manage to get all the projects done, which is absolutely amazing. Um, and I think… I’m just so grateful that I've come across, um, a teacher like Teresa, and a college like Silai that enables women to come along to it and try out various things, and learn skills. There’s a lovely café there, and for those women who have children, there’s a crèche that’s just amazing for them, which costs a pound a morning from what I gather. And these women can come to the college, and do all these amazing creative things, children are looked after. It’s wonderful. So I’ve been very very grateful, and it’s opened lots of doors, and what that now means is that I would love to look at the possibility of seeing if I could earn a living somehow, in the art world now. I don’t know whether- how practical that would be, I gather it would be quite a tough journey, and you’d have to work a lot of hours. But at this moment in time, I’m pensioned off from work, though that’s ticking over just about, and I’ve got time, which I never had before when I was working full time plus, to actually pursue another love in my life, which is going down the road of colour and art and, doing all sorts of things like that. I’m still not a drawer, you now, if you give me a bowl of fruit or a plant to draw, you won’t get an image, but art doesn’t only mean drawing. There’s sort of all sorts of ways of being artistic and creative, and I've found a way. Do you think um, finding- having the time that you’re saying to us, becoming ill and then all this time being opened up for you and how you’ve then been able to explore art deeper has been a- a therapy as well for you- Very much so. I think being creative is very therapeutic. Very therapeutic indeed. Um, yes I think it’s helped me tremendously, in terms of finding- you know, going back to my doctors’ words, reinventing myself. I now have a role in the world again. I lost that, and I had to find another role, and one of my friends says: ‘I don’t see you as a social worker anymore, I see you as Brenda the Artist, rather than Brenda the Social Worker.’ So, that’s lovely, because when I go back to school, I think how that was squashed out of me. What I haven’t mentioned is a friend that I was once- the school I really enjoyed for one year at, the one present when I was an older teenager, she sent me this set of inks, colourful inks, and she said: ‘I know you- one day I hope you’re going to use these.’ And I didn’t for probably about twenty years, but they were there, I kept them, and then one day I used them, and I thought: ‘Yes!’ (Laughs) So she had faith in me all those years ago. Um, what effect do you think coming to- finding Silai has had on your life? You’ve spoken about it a little bit, when you just- Maybe, you could speak a little bit more about the effect you think it’s had. When did you first come to Silai then? Well I've been there for two years now, so where are we now? So it would have been September 2006. [00:36:31] And how do you think Those- what do you think- what sort of role do you think it plays in your life, of those two years? Well it’s been amazing, you know, it’s opened doors, it’s given me opportunities for another career, possible career outlets. It’s taught me to use a sewing- you know, being there I've been using a sewing machine for the first time, I've learnt about knitting, I've learnt about stitch, I've learnt about making yarn, about dying things. It’s given me a fantastic foundation, and I'm a very creative person, and it’s given me so many ideas, um, to go off on. It hasn’t given me the time to do it in, because of all the constrictions of the courses. That’s not Silai’s fault, it’s the government restrictions on everything’s got to be um, assessed and blah blah blah. So that actually frustrates the creativity to some extent because of deadlines and with this year particularly we’ve had to do too much. Last year we had three units, this year there’s been five. So it’s meant that we haven’t been able to go as deeply into some of the topics that we would have liked to have done. But that’s not Silai’s um, wishes, that just how things are. But yes, it’s given a groundwork of plenty of opportunities, and one thing that I think I’ll do next year at Silai, if there is such a course, is just to learn basic sewing, because I think I need to get over that hurdle of my dislike of basic sewing, because if I’m going to be making things like book covers and bags and scarves, I need to know how to finish them off properly. Um, so that’s what I'm thinking I might do. Don’t think I’ll enjoy it as much as the textile course, but I've got the- Silai has given me a wonderful start to- it’s like a firework, um, like a Roman candle that, you know, it’s- everything's in the Roman candle, and when it’s lit everything sort of sparks out, well I've got lots of those opportunities to spark out in different directions, because I've got some of the groundwork there now. So I’m very grateful for that. Brilliant. I think we’ll probably leave it there. That’s fantastic! [00:39:05]