A few weeks ago I was walking back to my car in Skipton, after attending a lecture on an aspect of local history.  It was dark.  It was raining.  I was wrapped up in fleece and raincoat.  And I’m telling you this because it’s a little scene burned in my memory.  Suddenly I thought “this is who I am”.  Not the fleece and raincoat particularly (although you more often than not need those in North Yorkshire) but because of that startling and stunning sense that I was recovering the Vera I am used to being, who had been so distressingly missing in 2017.

On holiday in October, with a group of people I didn’t know, I had tried to explain a couple of times how I was feeling.  I’d said I felt like holding up a placard saying “this is not who I am” because the tearful, quiet, uncommunicative person they were seeing didn’t feel like me at all.  I wanted to tell them it WASN’T me.  I wanted to tell them what I was REALLY like. Continue reading →