Hey i miss him

if i walked away ,how would you feel
would you carry on without me
would you love me still
would you think your quite thoughts about me
like you do
when nobodys there
and your not ment to care about me
i know you feel in your heart
when we are apart
because i feel it
deep inside me
and no matter what proof
or how aloof
i still know that you think about me

evil lurking

about this thing of evil that i saw in my room i really don't know how to this day i stayed in my room didn't even call for help i was so scared.i had gone to bed and it was the dead of night say 2 or 3 am in the morning the house was silent was in my room alone mummy and Laura were up in the loft asleep and daddy asleep in his room i always kept my bedroom door shut i suddenly awoke and i knew something or someone was in my room there was a most terrible feeling i could see something black standing at the end of my bed still like a statue and silent all in black and unmoving i was beyond scared the atmosphere in the room was of evil i just laid there i know i prayed to god over and over please god help me make it go i closed my eyes and kept them tightly shut i just lay there still on my back then the thing sat down on my legs that is how i knew i wasn't imagining it i felt this heavy weight at some point it must have gone and i must have slept the rest of the night how did i not call out or scream or run up to mummy i was just a girl not sure how old somewhere between the ages of 9 to 14 as i never wrote dates down wish i had now but back then i never considered it i don't know to this day how i coped with that night i think it was because i was too scared to go past the thing it was definitely something from hell.where as the ghost of the women that i saw i was not afraid of at all.things continued to disappear every day my dad would take our dogs for a walk it was a family joke that sometimes he would just take them across the road to bobs and back which was directly across the road and back if he was being lazy my dad was always one for the arm chair and telly mummy and daddy always kept the dogs leads hanging up on hooks in the cupboard under the stairs every day my dad would hang them back up in the same place this particular day my dad went to get the dogs leads and they were gone he knew he'd hung them up the day before he searched high and low for them with no success the dogs went with out there walk for a couple of days about the 3rd day the leads were back on the hooks in there place in the cupboard, strange never did know where they went for 2 days, none of us took them .our lives continued happy go lucky mummy and daddy often took us to coombe woods coombe gardens and Lloyd's park daddy didn't really ever want to go although he went along with it he'd sometimes be fuming in the car waiting to go home to get back to the telly mummy often says do you remember that time we all went over Loyd's park and it was thick with snow and we all rolled down the hill in the snow including mummy as like i said she was all for us kids and always joined in the fun daddy stood there fuming and told us all to get up what would people think he always worried what anyone might think while none of us cared.we was truly ourselves and lived in our own happy world at the time that's not to say that every day was so great cause there was unhappy times too but not many those times were caused by other people outside the family and what seemed big then was only little things that i worried about like being called a name at school one black girl in those days we called them coloured girl had taken to call me names on the way home from school and she always appeared from nowhere and i would here her calling me Ribeanna i don't know why i cared about it at the time as my surname was Rigby somehow shed connected it with Ribeanna this went on for months eventually i just laughed at her and she stopped it never done it again and even started talking to me nicely each day.i had now made other friends at woodside juniors sandra thomas who was a big cloured girl she was loads of fun also mandy ingram who was a small blond girl both of these lived in grant road by this time i was in mr roberts class he was of the old school and didnt really feel i enjoyed his lessons he was too strict for me always kept the class behind after school this would go on for over an hour cause no one would be quite i always panicked if i was late out i dont know why but i was scared stiff my mum or dad wouldnt wait for me to take me home normally daddy met us in his blue morris minor cant remember whether it was the dark blue one or light blue but he had several of these cars .the first boy i ever liked was when i was 8 years old peter galany lived somewhere down by the brickworks opposite the school he was a quite nice boy used to dream about him all the time my last year at woodside was spent in miss viles class and tricia dawe who lived in spring lane with her sister and very strict mum became my best freinds tricia could talk she talked so much and sharon doyle also sat on our table and she talked more than tricia,sarah bevan who was also a freind was in mr junkinsons class i remember him with a big mostache,very strict and always bellowing and shouting at the kids sarah was always standing outside the headmasters room and would always laugh when we went buy in the corridor because she was in discrace again she was a funny girl who we stayed freinds with for years she lived at he back of the school in conistan road i had sometimes gone to her house and i remember her mum still had a beehive hairstyle somehow she aquired the name of horsebag bevan and we would nay about her mum we was just as creul at times mummy always said what good girls we were and that she never had any trouble with us but i could be horrible at times of cause im sorry now deeply so and il excuse myself in saying i was just growing up.like i said before we was great friends with the laws family down the road we always played inthe street with pamela laws and sometimes her brother keith they was always willing to be horrid at times to others in the street if pamela would ever knock on her own front door while she was out playing her mum would always shout out clear off she was a kind of wild left to her self girl one day in the street a new family were moving into a house known to us as the dead ladys house this was a family from kenya which consited of seema ,sheena and tim we soon got to know them seema was in my class at woodside came in the last year theres was a very good family posh with money also they were all a students the type that done there work so even though we hang around with them wentin there house etc there were times we was horrid me laura and pamela would all go ehind the green gates in our road to make plans about seema and sheena calling them names etci was due to leave woodside in the summer although my best friend was tricia dawe she wouldnt be in my class at davidson high as we already knew our classes inletters before we left seema was the only person i knew who would be in my class my life from then on was destined to be boring seema khan as my best friend a straight a student i couldnt envisage this anyhow this was my fate my first day at davidson i went in the class ready to sit next to seema when i saw this indian girl sitting by herself i sat down next to her this was the beginning of a very happy and extremly fun friendshipthat went o right through school and afterwards i dont think anyone in the whole school had as happy time as we had.later in life gita said to me we was happy helen wasnt we!

the happenings continue

it is between 1971 1973,mummy often talks with an elderly man who lives 2 doors up according to him an old women lived in the house alone and then what happened to her he didn know but a builder bought the house made many alterations then quickly sold the house and moved to australia mummy said she never trusted the bit in the bath room behind the bath that it had been built out unnessasarily and was a waste of space in her opinion a body could have easily been walled up there this was a fancifull idea and seeing as no one would ever knock the space out we would never know but something happened in that house to cause these things to happen anyhow over the years i continued to sleep in my frightening room alone now as ld wanted my own room as i was growing up and Laura had wanted the loft and mummy went up there with her to sleep a lot of preparation took place in converting the loft i don't know how long it took my dad but he done it really well that was after he fell through the ceiling ,not completely just one foot and one leg and then came the big plaster patch in my ceiling always to remind us of the event.daddy bought all new quality wood and laid floorboards down ,he done cupboards all along the right and left side the loft was quite big as it went across the whole of the upstairs rooms a window was also fitted and this became Laura and mum mys rooms along with all of Laura's books as she was a book worm and read all the time where i would normally not get passed the front cover of a book unless it was really interesting mummy and Laura would go up a wooden ladder to the loft and us girls thought nothing of going up and down it even though the top of the ladder was extremely high and as the hall way from the stairs went up so high it was quite a drop down i wasn't scared of it then ,but cant get up it now I'm 47 and am scared of the height of it needless to say that mummy now aged 70 and with 2 walking sticks still goes up there even the stairs seem to narrow to me and i have to be very care full going up and down them at one time i used to fly down them but i was a lively girl then.this is now that was then and there was one time i think it was Christmas and the evenings were dark our house was always cosy but had this spooky air about it ,i remember Laura and mummy were in the loft and for some reason i had gone up the ladder and just stood at the top holding on to the bars i wish it would thunder and lightening i said to mummy at that moment the light in the loft went out and there was a flash of lightening followed by bellowing thunder then the loft light switched on again a toy dog that walked and barked of Laura's was walking across the floor and barking no one had touched the chain that you had to pull to make it go we had all gone cold from head to foot then the dog stopped you also had to pull the chain again to make it stop none of us had touched the toy this was again a notable experience much talked about and remembered over the years.some one had made that dog walk invisible hands that we couldn't see the happenings often involved our toys or our animals which by this time we had 2 dogs and 1 cat sandy .the same man at my dads work offered him another puppy Jane another girl dog a cute little Labrador with blue eyes and a sticky up tail was only a little baby miniature thing she grew into a massive heavy dog how i loved her and she was naughty in the cutest of ways we had so much fun with the dogs Jane always played up when my dad went out she would run round the table get all the cushions off the chairs throw them in the air and growl and chew them up .we also continued our game rah with both dogs more to the neighbours annoyance which we didn't even consider as we was just having innocent fun .i don't remember what age i was when i saw the ghost of a women in my room it was the only time i ever saw a ghost in that house,well no actually there was another thing of evil that i saw but this person i was not afraid of i remember i had been ill and it was morning about 7am i was just coming too when i heard my bedroom door open as it was a glass door it had a distinctive sound as it was opened and closed i opened my eyes expecting to see my mum or dad but a women of about my mums age at the time maybe 38 say stood there dressed in a long dress of the colour black she had long brown hair also like my mums she spoke its time for me to go now she said and with that she went and i heard my glass door close behind her i knew it wasn't any of my family but i asked them anyway have any of you just been in my room they all said no mummy and Laura hadn't been down from the loft and it certainly wasn't my dad i related my ghostly tale to them all they all believed me as i wasn't one for lying and any how they knew what this house was like i never again saw this women her dress was of the 18800s style i would say .

ghostly happenings

it is still 1971 i am 8 years old Laura is 5 and after the first strange happening in our house we began to look for them anything strange anything weird that happened we began to take note of in our brains somehow it made life even more great and exciting we never talked about it to any one only between ourselves nanny new because she was often at our house when the occurrences happened one morning after nanny had stayed the night she asked me quite seriously Helen she said was you lifting my bed up in the night i could feel it being lifted up and down at the end no i said i hadn't touched the bed it was a heavy iron bed and with my nan in it as well ,she was no feather weight at the time i was probably older at this time as Laura had moved up in the attic so nanny slept in Laura's old bed in the scariest room in the house i was sure something happened in that room many years before we ever moved there either a murder or a suicide or something terrible as there was one time i went up to bed and as i got to the door the most terrible atmosphere hit me the atmosphere of the room was so thick i couldn't enter pure evil is the only way i can describe it i went up in the attic to Laura and mummy mummy i said the res no way i can sleep in that room tonight the res something evil in there i cant go in ,Laura got scared then and started pulling her bed across the attic room to mummy's bed i actually slept on the sunbed that mummy normally slept on i think mummy slept on the floor,spent a very uncomfortable night but it was better than facing that room next day we must have forgot all about it as the room was back to normal i wish now id wrote the date down of that night as I'm sure it was the date when something bad happened many years before.mummy used to always have an afternoon sleep or nap she would most times sleep in daddy's big bed while he was at work it must have been holiday time as me and Laura were both in the room i didn't see this ghostly happening as i was over by the mirror in the corner of my dads room which went into a little recess apparently mummy was lying in the bed , Laura was near by and sandy the cat was sleeping on my mums lap ,yes she was fast asleep when all of a sudden sandy rose up in the air went across to the side and dropped to the floor my mum said it was as if someone had picked her up moved her across and dropped her a cat couldn't do them movements by themselves,Laura saw it too,this was another event that we carefully calculated in our minds it was probably around this time that George our regular and local milkman told my mum an interesting tale about a family that lived down our road who's children played with the drains and they all died he was an old milkman definitely of the old school type and had lived and played round the area as a boy he remembered how there was farmland and haystacks before the roads were built he couldn't remember which numbered the family lived at though mummy really went along with this idea as it being our house were the children had all died especially when she went to work in Gowlands in Morland road and got talking with some of the older people there especially on ivy who remembered George the milkman as a boy and that they used to play in the haystacks she also remembered a family who's children all died and she thought it was number 35 which was our house this was exciting news for all of us and we talked about it between ourselves immensely but needless to say we have never found proof that it was our house obviously this did happen but which house remains a mystery .by my feelings ,what has happened and what i have found out maybe a very different type of family were haunting our house my mum and dad first acquired our house under suspicious circumstances in the first place at the time we was living in Coombe road and i was just 1 years old mummy and daddy wanted to buy a house they had looked at a few when quite by accident they came across an estate agents thed never noticed before and they was given the keys to no 35 this house was selling for 13 thousand mummy took a liking to the house straight away it was 1964 and they decided to buy this house as soon as they brought the house the estate agents vanished she could never find it again even though she knew shed been there it was never seen or heard of again.

our lives 1970,1971

it is 1970 and grandad Greene had just died he had become very thin and died at home of cancer i remember going to peace haven for the funeral and eats afterwards yet i don't remember being at the funeral mummy was expecting some inheritance as in his lifetime he had owned 3 houses the will left everything to his wife my nan and his 3 children mummy Rosalind and Ronnie we even went round the shops choosing things we would buy we was all really existed yet no one ever got a penny apparently Mary O'Brien took the lot and vanished and we never saw her again hers was always a name hated in our family .because my dad was a dustman he knew a man at work who's dog had just had puppy's daddy came home one day and said did we want a new puppy mummy said definitely no the next day there was the cute little puppy sitting in our living room a border collie cross black a girl but she acquired the name laddie as she had to be named after my mums dog when she was a girl who was a boy,confusing,anyhow laddie was quite wild ,she would growl and chase us and wed scream we made up a lovely game called rah which we played in the garden where we would run ,scream,jump on stalls and shout rah and laddie would respond by chasing us growling and jumping up trying to bite us we would fall about laughing this rah game went on for quite a while over weeks and even months so it was quite popular with us until a mo any neighbour shouted over the fence for us to be quite my mum was up in arms cause she was always for us kids and told us to carry on .we played it here and there .me and Laura used to play houses were one of us would have the square cloths horse with a blanket over and the other one had the Wendy house i always made out to Laura how nice the cloths horse was and how i wished i had it so then Laura wanted the clothes horse and i had what i wanted the Wendy house he he we had a lovely garden mummy used to grow hundreds of cornflowers i think they seeded them selves at the end of the garden near the crazy paving was a wondrous display of blues,pinks,mauve's etc she had lovely roses too ,deep reds,whites,pale pinks the scent was beautiful that led up the path to the alley .mummy had 3 very spiky gooseberry bushes sometimes she done a desert with them me and Laura hated gooseberry's so we never eat it,she never moaned we hadn't eat it she just took it away and we didn't get anything else we got a good meal and afters every day we had our meal at 40clock and always sat at the table because laddie was always allowed in the house shed often get a potato or tit bit plonked on the floor the telly was always on and we had to put up with boring programs while we eat our dinner such as the politics show on Sunday or the football results i remember eating most of my dinners to this Sheffield Wednesday 1 tottenhan 0,arsenal 3 crystal palace 1 etc etc daddy always done the pools so he had to check the results .by now we had come to realise that we as a family were not alone in the house as strange occurrences often happened things would disappear most reappeared after a few days but some things were never seen again like a poem my mum wrote when she was a girl at the George Raine school i became a bit scared of the house and never wanted to be alone in it if my mum was out and id walked home from school on my own id been told to go round the back alley and that was one fear as i had to pass the back of other gardens and was absolutely terrified of other dogs i would creep down the alley with my heart in my mouth only to jump out of my skin when a dog would charge at one of the fences growling whimpering scared id run to our gate which was right at the end of the alley then my next hurdle was to somehow get over the very high gate with wooden spikes on i think i climbed on the dustbins then very un lady like climbed over and more times than not to get the back of my dress stuck on the spikes and showing all my draws i still remember my annoyed feelings of such hassle sometimes id walk in the next door neighbours and climb over there fence as it was easier anyhow when no one was in even though the back door had been left open for me i wouldn't go in the house until some one came home instead id sit on the large coal bunker polishing stones rather than face what ever was lingering in our house.

the joys and woes of childhood

back to the past again,which is a place i love going it is 1970 and i am about to start Woodside juniors in moorland road i was 7 years old and they gave you a choice it was either Oval road school or Woodside ,mummy choose woodside for us we kind of lived in the middle of the distance between both schools ,some kids in our road went to oval Pamela laws went there im glad i went to Woodside i continued to be best friends with Lisa and tracey although i hated my teacher of the first year miss prike a nasty bit of goods if ever there was one she virtually had nothing to do with me most of the time she was a cold sour puss at best of times and the worst was she ripped my work up in front of the whole class and shouted in my face even though i felt id done my best which was a shock to find out she thought it was rubbish.i still remember her .Mr Davis was the headmaster for years he was more of the old school type and every one had respect for him we also had a head mistress miss Barnett and although some people thought her wonderful to me she was like a looming monster that i just wanted to stay away from she pulled me by the hood of my coat once from the cloak room and bellowed at me still don't know what i did wrong i was just an innocent girl back then always did my work i remember working very hard on a tree project drawing and a bird project really studied my projects out got books from Ashburton library i used to copy out the pictures of birds and leafs for my tree project and to this day i still know all about trees and birds i just stuck with my 2 Friends at play times but my nasty teacher had moved me from my friends table to a table of 3 bitchy girls Caren dirken and the worst was Erika Foley and i don't remember the 3rd but they done there best to make my life a hell i told on them as even back then i always done my best to put my life right for myself anyhow i think i was in that class for 2 years and the only consolations was my projects my friends and the tuck shop at break which i loved the type of crisps they sold which were called chip straws i didn't stay for school dinner i went home dinners mummy always took me to school on the back of her bike which squeaked as she rode it i didn't like this but she insisted and you never questioned anything as her word was always law even though i used to die of embarrassment i was 7 and 8 and probably even 9 and still being rode to school i remember once mummy caught my foot in the wheel and even though i was shouting for her to stop she carried on riding and my foot was twisting round in the spokes .i was kind of relived when Laura started school as i was chucked out of the back seat and Laura was rode to school i was told run beside the bike but on the path so every day i was worn out running to school .i remember the first time i stayed to school dinners i didn't know how to use a knife and fork cause we always used our fingers at home no matter what messy dinner it was we was like cave girls or like king Henry the eighths banquet .mummy had saved up and bought some reproduction dark furniture for the living room which was copy's of antiques first the big sideboard with leaded cupboard windows then a long dark brown table with 4 chairs and then a smaller dark matching sideboard this i think was the last straw for my dad as i remember the scene he caused over that sideboard and they was having one of there rows that wernt serious but more funny than anything my mum would get the newspaper out roll it up and start hitting my dad with it i remember her saying how that's it she was sending all the furniture back now but they still have it today some 30 years later we had a big wheel back chair which was mainly daddy's chair as he nearly always sat there as close as he could get to the telly a few years later mummy bought a wheel back rocking chair and another dark wheel back chair by the window we had a long but quite narrow back garden me and Laura were often out there playing in the summer though i suffered terribly with allergies my eyes would be bloated red and sore sneezing beyond it back then there was nothing to help no medicines or tablets no eye drops like i have now it was just grin and bear it.i remember the soaking wet flannels i would hold to my eyes nothing helped i was allergic to grass in flower probably other things too as i really did suffer mummy had optrex eye lotion that was the only thing on the ,market back then and you would often see me with a big blue eye bath on my eye didn't seem to work mummy always took us kids out we went here there and everywhere when we was young we had a car through out our childhood daddy always drove weekends or school holidays we was always out visiting old castles wed been to scotney heaver ,Leeds,Knowles deer park,chart well,the home of Winston Churchill,Charles dickens house to name but a few we also went to the seaside places little Hampton ,camber sands winchelsea mum made our life great i think daddy used to get fed up with it all there was often rows on the way you know in there funny kind of way i was always car sick and Laura was a little too if i took egg sandwiches with me i was OK i would eat them when i started to feel sick Laura hated the smell of the egg sandwiches which actually made her feel sick daddy would never open the windows in case his hair got messed up or he was cold so we was often sick even though mummy was shouting to open the windows for fresh air then i would be sick all in the car and my dad would get the blame i remember once we went to a seaside and someone i think it was Laura decided to bring some seaweed home in the car it was a really hot day and in the heat of the sun the smell was brewing up in the back on the parcel shelf my stomach was churning over i dont know why to this day no one thought to chuck it out the window .nanny would often come to stay shed get the no 60 bus from north London which would take her to south norwood bus station then shed get a 12a or 197 to morland road near our house sometimes my dad would pick her up from south norwood but normally he was at work in the morning when she arrived nanny was a great gossip monger and as soon as she was in the door you'd be hearing about other peoples business in the family shed also be taking note of anything she could gossip about to others about us mummy didn't like this Fiona was my nans favorite who is my cousin she seemed to favour molly and Ronnie who was her son and there kids they lived in tottenham and when we saw them we never spoke there was always just a big silence we didn't know them and we was painfully shy anyway mummy used to say how nanny always bought the front row seats in a show for them and we always was right up in the circle so far back we couldn't see molly was posh though and i expect nanny felt she had to keep in her good books when molly was young she never wore a dress more than once she would just throw it away were we was more rough and ready nanny was disgraced that mummy was wearing a cardigan with a massive hole in the back and sleeves stretched longer than her arms were our dogs had played tug of war with them even though nanny had bought mummy this jumper and it was a lovely jumper when new it was brown and white big squares i see a photo of it new but it was a terrible wreck and mummy still used to wear it in the end nanny bought mummy a new one and this one went the same way.i remember once nanny and daddy were up in arms because mummy had rode her bike in her nightly dressing gown and slippers round to the phone box which was at least 3 roads away i always found these things funny and was proud of my mum for being herself and not caring what any one else thought.

starting school and other memories

When i look back when we was girls we was really happy i think i had quite a rude awakening at age 5 though when i went to school and found that other children and teachers could be down right horrible any way i made my first little group of friends at Davidson infants in Addiscombe it was situated in the high school at the time and this was 1968 the new Davidson infants hadn't been built yet and the old one was bombed in the war just the site existed in dalmally road where the new school stands today my new friends consisted of Lisa Gosdon who lived in Davidson road and Tracey hoskins who lived in Rees gardens Lisa's back garden backed on to Tracey's in those days sometimes i went to play round Tracey's sometimes Lisa's Lisa was my best friend all through infants there was other people i knew like Keith laws who was in my class and lived a few doors up from us i remember laughing at his jokes he couldn't walk very well as he had muscular dystrophy and his legs just progressed worse i heard he died when he was in his 20s Pamela laws was one of my sisters best friends and we always hung around her in the street mummy used to let us play outside a lot and i have so many memories i somehow always expected every one to be nice probably because i lived in a cosy little world of niceness with my family and until i went to school i never knew any different was a bit of a shock when i realised people could be different outside in the world .i was painfully shy but loud and lively with people i knew so it was 2 different characters coming out i never said boo to anyone i didn't know yet i was wild with my friends and at home mummy hardly ever smacked us i only remember one big thrashing and that was because id taken an antique brooch to school that had been handed down for generations and picked out the precious blue stones and lost them apparently i was going to have it when i was 18 it would have been worth something.that was the only time i remember being smacked.i have few memories of the infants but those i do have are vivid in my mind i remember only 2 PE sessions one i remember because even at the age of 5 i was embaresed because i had to wear boys pants apparently they had no girls knickers so there was me on the climbing frame trying with one hand to hang on and the other hand to hold up these far too big white y fronts apparently id wet myself that's why i was wearing them i still remember the embarrassment the other time i was just finishing PE when suddenly everything went quite and all sounds seemed to be coming from a distance suddenly i could see stars everywhere i looked all over the other children were these stars i knew something was wrong with me i remember my dad carrying me home from school but i remember nothing after this i had appendicitis i know i had my appendix out and went to the hospital i have the scar yet i have no memory of anything after the PE session not even coming home from the hospital or being in there everything is blank .it was about when i was 3 or maybe 4 that my mum slipped on ice and severely injured her spine she was carrying Laura at the time this must have been a terrible time for me although i don't remember it as my mum was my whole world and i would have been very unhappy if she wasn't there i often used to panic if i couldn't see her any way i don't know why but if i couldn't see my mum or i thought shed disappeared i used to start screaming horrifically this went on till i was at least 8 years old i remember one time mummy had gone round to the phone box in dalmally road to phone nanny she was gone half hour at least i was convinced something terrible had happened to her i was screaming running in and out of the front door calling for my mum Laura just stood there .when mummy got back a neighbor told my mum all she could see was this thing running in and out and hear this horrific screaming that was me that's what i was like panic stricken if i thought id lost my mum.we had a proper nan it was 1960s and my nan was what i would call a real nan she was a bit dumpy wore the nanny coat shoes and headscarf always carried her bag with her shopped at marks and Spencer's and eat at British home stores she always brought us sweets so while she was gossipping to my mum when she first arrived at our house her bag would disappear into the other room carried by our little hands wed go down it check shed brought the sweets then quietly put it back with out her realising nanny can we have our sweets now wed say after your dinner shed reply like i said she was the proper nan she was a gossip monger my mum always joked to us girls that she was a walking newspaper mummy was often livid and annoyed when her own business was put round the family by nanny she went from family to family spreading gossip us girls hated it if we was ever out with nanny and she saw someone she knew we knew wed be standing there for a very long time one time she got well annoyed with me as i kept saying nanny lets go now while she was trying to talk to some women in the end i pushed her and she nearly toppled over and shouted at me and we went .nanny often came to our house as she was on her own her and her husband my grandad had separated years before when my mum was 14 they had never divorced he lived in peace haven with his women Mary O'Brien my nan lived on her own in nice flats in queen Elisabeth close north London it was my nans decision to leave him they hadn't spoken for years and then my nan left he met Mary O'Brien and lived with her she was an Irish women i still can picture her she never liked any of us my mum reckons she tried to poison us once when she invited us for dinner i hardly ever saw my grandad and really didn't know him i just remember him dying that he had took to drink and the drink caused cancer and he died in1970 aged 50 i remember he liked to play the piano and that he was all for his kids when he was young as my mum told me his favorite songs were Greensleeves and England's fields. on the first page of my life story is a photo of my grandad with my mum and her brother Ronnie feeding pigeons my nan is in the bottom picture and once again my grandad in the bottom right hand photo .i was about 8 years old and Laura 5 when we as a family began to realise there was something strange happening in our house.the very first thing that happened was to my mum yet she has only told us this years later apparently mummy was reading the bible in our bedroom at the bottom of our beds us girls were asleep when all of a sudden she heard the most beautiful music playing she wasn't sure were it was coming from so she carried on reading i don't remember this but apparently i woke up and asked what the music was so she knew it was real then as she sat there the pages of the bible started to turn by them selves several pages turned over my mum was quite shocked this was the first that she remembers s the first that me and Laura remember i s when Laura's sindy doll went missing we searched high and low for this doll i remember having a strange feeling about it anyway i looked under the sofa in the front room and daddy looked there too it wasn't there i looked again there it was right in view you couldn't have missed it under the sofa in perfect view .