I was a solitary child who lived in a world of words and music, of imagination and the arts and I felt keenly the vast divide between myself and the … - Ingrid Andersen

Some people find the goldfish bowl difficult to live in – I thrive in it. There is no peak hour traffic. The cathedral bells ring on Sunday and Thursday evenings in the mist. The sunsets are spectacular. You can find a donkey cart (with a set of donkeys) parked neatly in a bay between a BMW and a Golf, and there are often cattle in my street. Cattle have right of way.

The first poem in my childhood notebook was written when I was eleven. It was a poem about the conflict I felt when my cat had slaughtered a bird. I don’t remember much about my writing before then, just that I always escaped into words.

God is a great recycler – he took a broken, shattered woman and slowly breathed life into her again. I began to trust people enough to make some wonderful friends. I began to believe in myself again.