Kent to Kent
From the county to the River Kent.
Life after massage
Oh, how I wish I’d gone into this before! Great to give, great to receive. What could be better?
Having qualified in sports and remedial massage therapy, I felt happier than ever. But studying continues and I have trained in more advanced clinical massage techniques. It’s not always easy returning to study as a mature student, but it’s been worth it. It’s just wonderful meeting and working with such a variety of people.
Life before massage
I moved to Kendal after graduating from Oxford Poly. A year later my partner and I went off to travel around the world, working in Australia. On returning, I worked as a cartographic editor for Bartholomew’s in Edinburgh. As I love maps I thought this would be it. But the urge to work in a developing country took over. As posts with my cartographic skills would be few and far between, I retrained to be a teacher back in the Lake District, wanting to be somewhere I loved. After three years teaching, which was fantastic, we headed off to India to volunteer for a year in an orphanage school in Chennai (Madras). My husband repairing a dilapidated boarding home (he’s an architect) and me teaching special needs. I’ll have to stop there or I’ll go on for pages! Anyway, we returned to the Lakes once again and made a conscious decision to stop gallivanting and settle down. That was in 1998.
So, as many people who live here know, having a career and sticking to it doesn’t always work. I worked in Kendal TIC, made soft furnishings and upholstery and was the Lake District National Park Authority’s publications coordinator. Then I had the opportunity to retrain and now I can’t imagine doing anything other than massage.