I fell and broke my ankle out on the common, which was careless, and then of course I had to go and see my GP because I needed time off sick. And I went to her one day and she said, ‘How’s the ankle?’ And I just dissolved, I just fell apart completely and said, ‘My ankle’s fine’. Which it wasn’t. ‘My ankle’s fine it’s just me. I can’t do it anymore’. And.

You needed somebody to look after you.

Yes, yeah. And I mean that doesn’t mean that my children haven’t because they’ve been wonderful. They really have, well three of them and the fourth one we’re working on [laugh]. No he’s, he’s ok now. He’s fine. I have to say I’m very proud of him now. But he was very hard work, very hard work. And I just fell apart completely. I couldn’t. I couldn’t cope any more. And my GP said, oh you know, “Would you like to see somebody?” And I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do” And she set it [counselling] up and I turned up at this day centre thinking I shouldn’t really be here. There are people who need it far more than I do. And actually that was a load of rubbish because I needed it tremendously and I needed somebody to say to me, “It’s ok to go on being alive”. Because I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to.

Mm.

I think I’d reached a point there where I was just at rock bottom. I really, really was so.

So this was a trained professional counsellor?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How often did you go and see that person?

I saw that person once a fortnight for three years. He’s now retired but I think it enabled me to put my life back on track where I just literally; I think to an extent I had still been on autopilot. I do. I think I’d been on autopilot. I think after a shock like that it is so, so difficult to, to go on functioning as a human being. You function at a totally different level. What was normal is not normal anymore and the new normal isn’t normal. It’s not what you want it to be but you do it anyway because that’s what happens.