It's difficult to imagine how liberated I was feeling following the incredible events of the last couple of years regarding my spiritual revelations. Both friends, myself and my future husband were now fully aware of my abilities, or so we thought (they will deepen as future posts are written) and my next step was to continue with mobile readings wherever possible.
My full time job in the Civil Service continued to take priority as it provided me with my only income at this time and I still considered this to be an excellent career path for the future. I had no wish to charge for readings as I wanted to give my gift away, and the idea of making a secure living from doing a few sittings a week seemed impossible.
The success of the sitting in South Yorkshire triggered off many further requests for my time, so I excitedly purchased my first ever diary and started booking appointments for a couple of evenings a week and some weekends too.
As I had no car of my own Richard would often arrange to collect me after work to take me to the clients home where he would always wait patiently outside or call back a few hours later when the readings were finished.
There was no sat navs or mobile phones to rely on in the late 70's, so we often found ourselves lost in the back streets of many Yorkshire towns both on our way there and back, but I was determined to not let people down so we always persevered until we found the correct address.
At first I enjoyed doing mobile readings as they gave me great insight into the strength of my gift as well as revealing so much about what was expected from a professional sitting. I was usually made very welcome especially when the reading involved a serious need from the client to communicate with loved ones they had lost. However as the weeks went by I found myself also being booked to attend groups of three or four women who did not hide the fact that I was their "entertainment" for the night. I would be sat in someone's living room or kitchen with very little privacy to talk, while chatter and laughter would echo through thin walls,glass doors or even worse noise from the television in the room next door if their husbands or children were at home.
Negative comments were also made about me looking too young to be taken seriously (not helped by me wearing Doc Martins and jeans at the time) and on a couple of occasions people actually shut the door in my face saying "you don't look like a medium, I've changed my mind!" I`m sure this was not helped by the fact I was new to the work in their eyes and doing free readings made it seem that I was'nt good enough to command a fee.
Often the quality of my readings (when they went ahead) dispelled that attitude, but I felt over and over again that I was having to prove myself much more than the older, more well known mediums, I was becoming increasingly frustrated and deflated. On one hand I was proud that my name and good reputation was spreading further afield but on the other I was loosing interest and enthusiasm for so many negative reasons.
I also discovered that the nature of the work meant that you could never ask why someone wanted to see you as they would assume you were trying to get information from them for the reading, and I realised I had no idea that so much cynicism surrounded the subject of which I was now so at ease with.
Away from readings people would insinuate that I was lying to myself as well as anyone who turned to me for communication with spirit, this I deeply resented! As I said previously I had been brought up by loving, protective parents who went through so many difficult years with me, and not once did they accuse me of lying.
I think the final straw came when I was out socially with Rick one night and some casual friends invited us back to their home for birthday drinks along with a group of their friends. All seemed normal until some of the women started asking, almost insisting that I do a reading for one of them to "show what I could do" and while feeling awkward and embarrassed by their behaviour I made an excuse to go get myself a drink. As I went into the other room some of the men were saying loudly "apparently she turns water into wine and can walk through walls, she thinks she's Jesus Christ." I felt totally humiliated and as none of this had been said in front of Richard I quietly insisted that we left the party without further explanation.
Once in the car I could feel tears streaming down my face and I remember saying to Rick "I've been set up, they think I'm a freak and someone to make a fool of, well I'm not doing any more readings ever!"... to be continued.