One day something disastrous happened. Phil and I were on our way to the supermarket and he drove straight through a red light without seeing it. Then in the supermarket, I’d wandered off to get something when he rang me in confusion. ‘I don’t know where I am’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’ I replied and he said ‘I can see apples and oranges and I don’t know where I am’. Something was really wrong, so I bundled him into the car and took him to the doctor, who immediately sent him to the hospital with a diagnosis of Lymes disease. Disaster. He was there a week and after that couldn’t work much for two years. Things became very hard. I still wasn’t selling much in those days and we lived on my income support of £42 per week. I remember looking for dropped coins on the street, and thinking that if we had £10, we would be ok.
Then one day we had a knock on the door, and there stood Brian, one of the farm workers with a tiny kitten in his hands. Lots of feral cats lived on the farm and this kitten had lost its mother. ‘Do you want it?’ Asked Brian. We couldn’t afford it, but it looked at me and I was undone, he didn’t need to ask twice. Of course I wanted an orphan kitten! We named her Polly as she would sit on my shoulder whilst I worked, and before very long…
