About me

My name is Gillian, but friends and family call me Gill, and I have two grown up children of whom I am immensely proud, both now married.  I also have a wonderful grandson and delightful granddaughter. I’m old enough to have found my way through many of life’s difficulties, to have learnt a great deal though acres of mistakes, but still young enough to enjoy kicking through the fallen leaves, and collecting conkers and sweet chestnuts on a wet welly walk with the dog in Autumn.

I was born in London, but have lived in Crawley, in the heart of the Sussex Weald since I was seven years old. It’s a vibrant, diverse town, but much maligned by the media – it really is much nicer living here than the tabloids would have us believe!

I spent almost twenty years working as a Higher Level Teaching Assistant at a local primary school. I started as a volunteer when my kids were small, but they grew up and moved on to secondary school, and somehow I got left behind. It was great working with children for all those years, mostly teaching literacy, phonics and spelling, and helping those who were finding it difficult. But things have changed dramatically in schools over the last few years, and it became increasingly difficult to gain any satisfaction from the job I once enjoyed, and so the time came to move out of mainstream education. I loved working in school, and I love working with children, so now I volunteer at a local nursery where I pop in with my guitar once a week or so, and we have great fun singing action songs and nursery rhymes.

I’ve been a Christian since I was fourteen, and am an active member of the Vine Christian Fellowship, which meets in Crawley. I am a member of the worship band, I play guitar for our Sunday school, and sometimes write children’s worship songs. Occasionally I can even be persuaded to prepare a talk for a Sunday morning.

For as long as I can remember, I have written. Stories, poems, songs, thoughts; scribblings on scraps of paper, musings on computer, notes on laptop or tablet. I love words and the sounds of words, and the way these words and sounds string together and flow in sequences, rhythms and intonation.

So here is a platform for some of my work. I can play with words and sounds as much as I wish. And maybe some other folk can enjoy them too.