I'm Caroline. I'm divorced, 56 years old and live alone in a small third floor apartment in Winchester, a cathedral town in southern England. I have two married children in their 30s, neither of whom live anywhere near me (my son lives and works in Paris) and my daughter had a baby boy in October 1996 so I'm a grandma.
Until July 2006 I was Activities Organiser in a local nursing home, but they made me redundant - then took TWO other people on shortly afterwards :(. I'd only had the job for 6 months after being off work for 3 1/2 years following an accident.
I've done all sorts of things in the past though. I was a translator (Flemish Dutch - in 1996 I spent a month in Antwerp in Belgium translating training course notes into English) for 18 months till the firm went bust. For a year I was also in the Women's Royal Air Force in 1971 till I married in January 1972 so I had to leave.
My father and ex husband were in the Royal Air Force so I moved around A LOT! I went to 9 different schools and never got any academic qualifications so I persuaded my father when I left school to let me learn to type and I've never regretted that because I've temped for years (usually secretarial/clerical jobs - anything from half a day to 8 months and for all sorts of businesses.
I went to university when I was 40 years old - after my ex husband went off with someone else. I got a Bachelor's in English (linguistics as well as literature) and got halfway through a Master's in IT but had to drop out halfway through because all the stress caught up with me big time :(.
I DO have a life outside my computer though. I'm a singer. I belong to a large choir (about 100 singers) which sings in the Cathedral (we're currently rehearsing Acis and Galatea by Handel) and a small choir which goes around to nursing homes and Seniors' clubs singing "golden oldies". There are 9 of us and I'm the youngest! I go to church and I'm currently doing a Pitman Diploma course. I want to learn website design and programming, but I have to do the "bread and butter" of Microsoft applications first before I can have the "jam" of Dreamweaver and the rest, so I'm working my way through Excel at the moment. I taught myself HTML, which is what I used to set up my current website (see the link in my sig).
Meanwhile, I spend most of my spare time on my computer doing online surveys, playing VV1 and 2, Westward, Tradewinds Legends and being a Moderator on
How What Why (my screen name there is Sunflowers).