Valerie Thompson

I left school age fifteen, so my education is drawn from the university of life. When I was a child there was a lovely lady called Mrs Cranston who lived two doors up, and in the summer she used to sleep in the garden - in her bed, one with an iron bedstead. She loved her cats, and struck me as a very peaceful soul, with a love of nature, and if I were to want to be like anyone, it would be her. A man knocked at our street door in the early hours of one morning, brandishing a gun; he was looking for my dad, who wasn't at home and was in a relationship with his wife. My mum was hysterical, as were us kids, and we retreated to the back of the house and began screaming for help from an upstairs bedroom window. Mrs Cranston heard our calls and, we discovered later, calmly walked up and confronted this man, and succeeded in getting him to hand over the gun. As I recall he had escaped from Warley mental hospital (I am not joking). The police came and took him away. Sadly, Mrs Cranston died in a house fire. I love to write and spend too much time at my computer. Thank you for reading. xx