I got chucked out of History, Geography and French. The geography teacher positively hated me. I could do his accent too well, and it enraged him. Sad little man who eventually got sacked for very innapropriate behaviour if I remember correctly. I wish I was there when he got fired. To see that smug superior expression get wiped, and to stick my middle finger up at him, doughnut!

 Regardless, doughnut er no. His banishment of the classroom meant that I did my lessons in the library. Being chucked out of all those classes didn’t help me get any qualifications, but they did solidify my love for reading. I read and read in there. Nothing fancy I wasn’t reading Proust, but I did gobble up every Judy Blume in record time and couldn’t wait to start more. I then started buying books from the charity shops and read all my mums Catherine Cookson’s and Viginia Andrews. Flowers in the Attic series I loved and couldn’t get enough of. When I stumbled across Rosamund Pilchers the Shell Seekers I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. There was one amazing teacher at Penair who told me I was a talented writer. She would get really frustrated with me though as the only punctuation I used was exclamation marks!!! She told me to write and write and assured me that I would get better.

I didn’t write for years and years, I was busy with the kiddywinks and life and feeling not good enough. I wasn’t the kind of person who could write a book. Who did I think I was?

I knew I had problems with getting what I wanted on the page, but what I didn’t know was that I was dyslexic until I finally went to university. They picked it up straight away and in my assessment with the educational psychiatrist (A very stern Scotsman). I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia. How ironic that all those ailments are so hard to spell. He asked me if I was clumsy. Seemed like an odd question. I said NO! This assessment went on for hours and he was not the most empathetic of chaps.  I was not able to do the simple task of copying a picture and reassemble it onto a cubed puzzle. I felt stupid and upset and when I stood up quickly I tripped over the chair right in front of him.

 His told you so face needed slapping, but, as you obviously can’t do that in grown up university land, his face was left untouched.

I would hide in the toilets at Uni between seminars, I didn’t know what else to do. I was feeling like an imposter and a fraud and completely and utterly out of my depth. There was a bar, and I knew that if I went in there I wouldn’t come out. Soo in the toilet I hid, phoning home wanting to cry and quit and say this isn’t for me. The voices on the phone of encouragement and love would stop me. They were all so proud of me. I couldn’t quit. I just couldn’t.

In one class we were asked to say something about ourselves that was interesting. The afternoon before, I had been walking the dog along the top of the beach in Porthleven. There was a family scattering ashes on the beach. The wind whipped up at the exact moment they released their loved into the elements, and the wind blew them up into my face and right into my eye. This had worried me greatly my eye was gritty and watering for days. It would have me thinking about all things existential and biological for weeks to come.

When it came to my turn of telling something interesting about myself and even though I was silently saying to myself.. Don’t say it Shone.. don’t say it.. I said, I had a dead person living in my eye. I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but it came out like Tourette’s. After that people just kind of accepted me as a bit odd. I didn’t get too much hassle when I used the wrong pronouns. I think they accepted that there was no malice in me. I was just a boomer. And a weird one at that.

Although Uni was hard, and I was trying hard so desperately to not fall over in front of people, or drink too much - Come out of the toilet with my skirt tucked into my knickers or say the wrong thing. I was genuinely loving it. Reading, talking about books. Writing writing writing to a deadline was my absolute favourite thing.  I find if someone tells me a brief and when to write it by. I could smash it.

Dialogue was my forte and this comes from me studying people when I’m talking to them. My friends are used to me zoning out halfway through a conversation. It isn’t from not seeing you or hearing you. It’s from me seeing you too much. I notice the change in people’s pupils when they are talking about something they love. I notice how eyes move like the lens on a camera when they’re adjusting to light. People’s mannerisms fascinates me. I notice how you twirl your hair around your finger when you’re nervous and somewhere in my brain I take a snapshot and I’m like… I can use that in my novel. Mostly I notice what people don’t say. There is a lot more information there.

I was struggling so much with the academic side of things, and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. It was sheer will of determination and tenacity that got me through.

The creative, I was banging out, and even though things were spelled wrong, grammar was wrong, mostly me changing tense every paragraph, punctuation was wrong! I was flying, and I was still getting high marks.

For academic I was only getting 40% but that was all I needed. With the help of an amazing tutor who colour coded EVERYTHING for me - I got my academic marks up a little higher. I didn’t care about that too much, unless I was having a meltdown.

I was living the life of a writer. I had great friends I had a supportive family. I was happy and I was doing it ..I was struggling, but I was doing it. I was getting great feedback about my writing, especially my dialogue.

And then my boobs got sore. Ollie had had a vasectomy and was trying to say that I maybe being a bit neurotic. He wouldn’t say that phrase again for a while. Don’t ever tell a forty-one-year-old pregnant lady that they are neurotic. Ever!