Any way when we meaning my sister (who is 5 years younger than me), my mum and me settled somewhere, my mum met someone and they courted, and they eventually married. A few months down the line my mum and step dad decided that they wanted to move. We looked at houses all over England and Wales, but none of them we seemed to like except for one which was in Swansea in Wales.

My sister and I made a few friends on the estate and a few enemies. Why they didn’t like us we didn’t know. It was quite strange at first having been used to the Hampshire accent and then being in a strange place with an accent hard to understand at times.

When we had settled in and started to go to school, it was very different to how I imagined it. The school was very big for a comprehensive school it was more like a high school, I was very nervous I expect I wasn’t the only one, but a majority of people had known each other since juniors, where I knew nobody as I had just moved there.

I didn’t know which was worse finding out, that I had to learn French and welsh because I didn’t have much luck with languages or finding my way round the school which was like a maze.

By this time I made a few good friends in my form group, but there were still a few people who hated me for no apparent reason.

With the friends I made at school and in my neighbour hood. We went shopping, to the cinemas, out on picnics and hanging out together. My best friend Victoria who lived next door with her family, more or less went with me. We also had….. lots of fun climbing trees, making dens and feeding the horse in the field behind us.

Time soon flew by and I progressed in school learning new phrases and getting on with most people. Finding out that our cat was pregnant in which led her to having kittens under neath my wardrobe in my bedroom, and later on she had kittens out in the wild. We found good homes to the majority of kittens including the kittens that was born in the wild. Some kittens didn’t survive in the wilderness and blacky was very protective over them.

We did keep a couple of the kittens and named them bubbles and bambi, bubbles is pure black and bambi is Smokey grey.

On the weekends we used to go to an indoor market in neath, in time the stall holders got to know us and we talk to them a lot. A couple in particular, there names were Keith and Mary Holmes, they have 4 children, one of which is disabled. In time they gave me a job cleaning tables on a Saturday, this went on for some time then I was allowed to help out on the sweet store as well. (They had two stores, a burger van and a sweet stall) I occasionally stayed with them at there house to baby sit there disabled child Stephanie, who was as sweet as can be, and to help them on the market on a Sunday. I eventually stayed helping on the sweet stall and they gave my sister Claire a job clearing tables.

On Sunday evenings we went to karate as we lived in a rough area and my mum and my step father wanted the piece of mind that we could defend ourselves. In time we got another addition to the family, a dog called Micha. We got her a rescue centre and she needed lots of fuss and attention as she was badly treated by her previous owners and she was still a bit wary of being around humans. We got her home and she wasn’t too good around the cats at first but she soon got used to them. My step dad Dave spent a lot off time with her gaining her trust, in which eventually paid off.

After a couple of years my mother and step dad wanted me to have name changed to their name as I was the only one with a different name as Dave had adopted Claire. It all went to court because my dad wasn’t too happy about it; the courts eventually decided that it would be best for me to have a double barrelled name. So I would be Helen Martin- Stokes. So every thing had to changed at the doctors, dentists, opticians and the school, it did take me a while to get used to having another addition to my name.

Quite a bit off time passed and before I knew it, I was picking my options for year ten, which I was excited and scared because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would be taking my mock exams and my Gcse’s.Year 9 came to an end and it was the start of the summer holidays and we went loads of days out, we went to the welsh folk museum, Brecon beacons, Dan y Orgof show caves, Llancaiach Fawr Manor and we went the beach a few times as well. And when we didn’t go out as a family, we used to go out exploring with our friends as well as working on the weekend. I also had a few holidays in Southampton where my dad lived spent some time with him in the summer holidays and I also went to his wedding.

The time flew by and it was time to go back to school, but this time I was a senior I felt grown up, and it felt good. After a few months I done my mock exams, and my work experience followed. For my work experience I was put on a project called crucial crew because at the time I wanted to join the police force (only to be told I couldn’t because of my asthma). This entailed showing primary children around groups, and they learned about nature, buses, and trains including the dangers, electric plus dangers, the fire brigade, the police and ambulance.

Before I knew it, it was the summer holidays again and I went to Southampton for my Nan’s wedding and I ended up living there because of family problems with my mum which was out of control. So now I was living with my dad and step mother, I had to enrol in school again, and had to make new friends. Everyone had trouble understanding me because at this point I had a strong Welsh accent, and it got really confusing in French one day, because I answered in French and Welsh.

Another thing that I thought was strange was that everyone done there work experience in year 11 so I thought I had to do it again. But I didn’t as I had all ready done it, I had to stay on at school, and help the teachers and do any course work. After about a month I got summoned to my head of year’s office, thinking I had done something wrong I reluctantly went. Only to find out that I had been nominated, for a Prefects roll, by some teachers. I accepted and I had a big grin on my face for the rest of the day.

I continued with my school work, and after school I would go out with a few friends, hanging out on the streets, drinking or going to the cinemas and to a youth club.

Towards the end off year eleven I got job as a chambermaid in a 5* hotel, on weekends and holidays. Before I knew it I was taken my Gcse’s, doing more work at the hotel in which after I left school I went full time. (Now I wish I had gone to college then and got better qualifications) I got my Gcse results and I didn’t do to well in some, so I done an nvq in housekeeping

A few years had pasted by then and believe me I was a right tearaway, I got mixed up with the "wrong crowd" some would say and drank heavily, got into nightclubs when I was under age and I experimented with drugs. After a time of having a few rocky relationships and heavy drinking sessions, I decided I had enough so I came back to waterlooville as my dad and step mum had split up and gone there separate ways, and I had no other family in Southampton.

I moved back in my mother and step dad who had moved back from Wales and tried to get along with them.

I soon got another job as a fish monger in old Portsmouth, after a year I got my own council flat and bubbles my cat moved in with me and she became my confidant as I didn’t really know anyone. All my time then became consistent of is going to work coming home, spending time with bubbles and seeing my mum on weekends.

After a couple of years there, I got to know some of the neighbours, one in particular his name was Marc and we started to see a lot of each other in the corridor and after some time we became an item and now we are living in our own place with bubbles and we are now married.

Copyright © Helen Le May