A 99p record and a big kick from the past

 This morning I looked out at the sunrise, then looked around me in the kitchen. I was needed to tidy up and wash the plates this morning. No arty trips to the Tarn to take photos....how many can I need of one place anyway.
So here is one from a few days ago. Yesterday we went to Ilkley woods and the light was magical the sun warm the birds all tweeting like a summer day. Which is all good as summer consisted of a very lot of rain, then to properly ruin the season it blew a gale and decimated all things starting to grow tall.
so some beautiful looking weather in September is most acceptable.
After our forray to Ilkley we came home, cooked Monzas dinner and Lee went out to his garage to have a fiddle about with his stuff. what he actually does can be complicated and involving power tools and welders so I will not go in to it too much.

I thought "I know I will nip over to the junk shops!". Had I not already been through the one in Ilkley? well yes, but I did not find anything!
So to cut a long story short I found vinyl. A 99p record of the Eagles greatest hits. Usually i avoid the Eagles as they bring back far to many old weeping wounds. I guess I might have got over some of it at last because I bought the record....it had no cover that is why it was 99p. well I dont care I have plenty of covers...some I bought just for the picture....so home I trotted .

Eagles

City girls just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A rich old man
And she won't have to worry
She'll dress up all in lace and go in style

 I put the Eagles on my pink record player early this morning as I was having a clean. I am now writing this and drinking tea.
Now this is why I avoid the Eagles....

1983. Was a very odd year for me. In retrospect which is easy sitting here in 2017 with a cup of tea listening to the Eagles it was even more strange and odd than I remember.

 In no particular order 1983 went like this......

My mum died of cancer. I was all she had. We could not get on at all and she was never happy. Mum never got over my dad's death.We made up shortly before she died, but she still did not want me there at the end.
I went to America with the person who had caused the rift. It was not just my mum who had a problem with our relationship, it was every one. As it turned out "everyone" was right. I got myself well and truely beaten to a pulp. I remember looking for parts of my body to reattach........it felt that way any way. I remember sticking my own broken nose back straight with blood every where . I looked like a murder scene.....pain? oh yes. that hurt.
I got myself back to England.....I will not tell that one here. I wish to remain alive! and then just hid away .
discovered I was in the centre of a police drama, then a murder, and a robbery.
I got a degree in fashion and textiles. Sally H.E. Bland. BA(hons) I became.
.

 Once my bruises and ego started to disappear and I began to feel better I came out of hiding and worked out that I needed to earn a living. So I set up a shop with a work shop attached just near my flat in Bath and started to make whacky outfits which today look....well whachy! and very fortunately it was the 1980s so it did not matter at the time. Theatre costumes and bespoke wedding gowns. Even though I do say so myself...I was good at the weddings.
I had just found the premises for this venture and applied for a government run scheme for nutcases such as me who wished to become self employed.

So my shop was called Sally H.E.Bland Designer clothes, Bath. I designed a little logo and decorated the walls of the shop with pictures cut from fashion magazines as a collage....so all this was mine and I had taken control of my life...but could I sort myself out and survive!? well nearly, almost but not quite.
At this point on the course we were made to go on for the Government finance I met a new man.
Officially and according to paper work I still belonged to the beater, so more paper work was made and a lot more stress. I then had a nervous break down. The new man stepped in a picked me up , turned me around and pointed me in the right direction.
Both He and his family took me in and I got to know them all really well, I went shopping with his mum, And went to "tea" at their house about twice a week where I met and made friends with his two brothers and divorced Father, who also called around for tea about twice a week.
We mostly stayed at my flat, which I had by then acquired as part of my settlement from the beater.
New man was called Martin. He loved the Eagles and played nothing else. The eagles evokes this time very strongly....though I am listening and writing this day and finding it hard to remember now. 1983 was a very long time ago now.
Any way it was by now 1984. in fact February 1984. For valentines day I got a little card left in my post box. Martin was from Yorkshire......so flowers and chocolates and all were well out of scope.
Martin was a pilot. He did a lot of his training at Sutton Bank, Yorkshire and had just acquired a commercial pilots licence. His intention was to set up a business flying paying "guests" over Bath in a microlight. These damn things were all the fashion then....I had been to a couple of training weekends with him and I had been taken up in one a few times. Scary as hell. it was like being balanced on a paper kite. We all had to wear helmets. This always made me laugh. the damn things were made from metal poles and paper,....there was no chance of survival if it fell to the ground as they did not fly high enough for a parachute to be employed......
So On February morning I lent over the balustrade to the stairs as Martin left the flat. He was going to test some new wing designs for his Micro light. That was the last I ever saw of him. I did not even kiss him goodbye.....I thought he would be back in a few days.

I got on with making stuff in my shop and dealing with the beater and neighbours who had stated to complain because Martin was always there and they did not approve of my life style generally....I was basically mixed in with a bad crowd.....drink drugs and rock and roll. alot of this had come and gone from my flat in those days.
I went into Bath to a DIY store to buy a paste table which i intended to make into a table for pattern making and cutting fabric. I nice cheap way I thought. So I passed an evening paper stand. The headlines were all about a Bath man killed in a microlight accident. I bought a paper with shaking hands.
I read the article twice and then collapsed into a heap of hysterical tears. So bad in fact that a woman stopped and picked me up and sat me down on a bench. She stayed with me until her bus came and then she was gone. I just sat. no tears . just still and quiet. I do not know for how long. The light was going when I finally looked down again and yes the paper was really there in my hands still.

I went to a telephone box and called a reporter I knew from the paper and dummly asked if the story was true.
I then called Martin's mum. His brother answered. They had been frantically looking for me. Brother had gone around to the flat and neighbours would not let him into the building even though he pleeded to be allowed in to wait for me.

After all that had gone before this was by far the most shocking. unfortunately all of it came out at once. Became completely out of control. totally lost it. That would be putting it politely too

So the inquest and funeral all came and went. The beater got a prison sentence. This was not for the worst of his crimes which were many...it was what ever they could pin on him..... the neighbours called the police. a girl was murdered one night at the back of my shop. they only just found the killer last year 2016.....it was a local guy that I knew from the pub on the corner by my shop.

I went headlong total complete into drinking alcohol to excess. I drank every penny I had. that though came after some time.
So next.....I met my Next husband at a beer festival.   He was already a very practised alcoholic at that point so we teamed up. We both drank everything I had.