I'm back!

Phew! The old saying about needing a holiday to recover from the holiday isn't far wrong!

Sometime I wonder how on earth I used to live and work in London - and did so for 20 years! Four days staying with my best friend Kath and visiting with friends/relatives and I'm cream crackered! But saying that I had a great time - thanks Kath for being my best mate (26 years and counting) and being a fab host.

I did the Jack The Ripper Tour - highly recommended. Yes it was geared up for tourists. Yes there was a lot of other groups....but highly entertaining nonetheless and our guide wasn't the normal (resting) actor but a bona fide AUTHOR! I felt an instant empathy with her - she was very knowledgeable and has written a couple of books about JtheR as well as co-presenting a couple of documentaries on the History Channel.

I have to admit (I'm sure I'm not the only one) who has a macabre interest in JtheR. I've read a lot of books about him and have seen virtually every film etc, but seeing where all the murders took place was like putting the final pieces of a jigsaw all together.

But if there was one part of the tour I found the most fascinating, then it was the sheer scale of the poverty that was the norm in that area. People lived in such extreme poverty it beggars belief. The guide said that for 4 (old) pennies you could sleep the night away in a wooden coffin - sometimes with as many as 20 people in a room. If you couldn't afford 4 pennies then for 3 old pence men, women and children used to drape themselves over ropes that were strung up from one end of a room to other and sleep standing up! Sometimes there were as many as 50 people in a room all sleeping standing up. Can you imagine that - it really does make me shiver. As an EHO in the day job, it makes me proud to think that the founder of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health - Edwin Chadwick - was one of the few people who made a change in how people lived at that time - real pioneers in the fight for decent public health. Anyway enough ramblings for now. Gotta get that M&B Chapter polished as best I can and work on the (dreaded) synopsis. Take care. Caroline x