We locked horns, my dad and I. I was already straining and smarting from the unfairness of it all. My schoolfriends were all being celebrated in their families, encouraged to enjoy a relaxing or thrilling summer after all their hard work and accomplishments in school. But not I.

I of course had no clue that I wasn’t the only one ’straining’. My dad was straining at the bit, had barely restrained himself  thus far, that we should be in school for so long in the first place! Hadn’t he been out earning his keep when he was barely 11??  Hadn’t he been putting food on the table for too many years to count (x 6 mouths!). I should be making up for lost time, not dilly-dallying like the world was my playground!!

The eruption itself happened the moment I refused to take a job in Boots the Chemist; 6 days a week for 12 pounds sterling. So he stormed and raged and I dug my heels in and I don’t think we two had had such a set-to since I was 2. It felt huge and I left the house feeling like I’d been hit by a truck but I determined I would not go back through that door until I had the work I wanted. By tea time I had it. Who was at my shoulder that day, that I brought the Wimbledon Borough News, scoured the classifieds, spotted the job, and got it? Five days a week for 18 pounds sterling.

And, oh heaven... it was in John Dobbie’s Toy Store, Bagatelle Toys, in Wimbledon Village, with every delightful little plaything that we had never had as a children. Not just toys; crafted, exquisitely coloured, smooth and crafted, wooden toys from Denmark, and Germany, and Sweden. And Sasha Dolls with real girls and boys, real girl and boy babies; no genitals rubbed out like the nose on your face wiped clean off. The whole store was a treat but these two things I guess represented how utterly I had found my place.

Years now of working; therapeutic play for children in hospital, podcaster for World Without Oil (dot.org), bringing organic cotton to the marketplace, making pure beeswax candles with steam-distilled essential oils, PlaNetweaver Treasure Store....

Bring me more like these,  And,..... Thank You, for my work and the excuse it gives me to pour my vital energy into something good.