On the 4th of March 1968, the day after my 6th birthday, my father, then a sound recording engineer with EMI, permanently left us, our modern little two bedroomed house and England - to live and work in New York. Afterwards, although my father would - spasmodically - keep in touch, my mother and I contrived to live in what used to be referred to as 'straitened circumstances'.

The whole of my schooldays were spent at Streatham Hill and Clapham High School for Girls , that institution boasting both a Junior and a Senior School. Outside of school, until my mid teens, I lived a very quiet, solitary life, spending most of my weekends and holidays alone in my bedroom, a small sunny south-facing room which was to become my world: a world in which I would draw and paint, or play with imaginary friends, all the time dreaming of a more exciting and action-packed future...

With a strong aversion to mathematics and team games, academically I was a late starter, invariably looking out of the window during most lessons, or turning cartwheels when I was supposed to be fielding on the Rounders pitch, or otherwise trying to impress my friends by doing impersonations of the teachers. In addition to these diversions, I had discovered another passion in the form of a small, portable tape recorder my father had given me as a birthday present: For even though I had been deprived of music lessons, I found that I could now compose songs and sing them straight onto cassette. My mother too, would sing a song but hers was always the same, and after several renditions of the Noel Coward classic: "Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington," any dreams I may have harboured of treading the boards were swiftly nipped in the bud. So at 16, having eventually 'knuckled down' to my 'academic' studies, and leaving school with 8 good grade O Levels, I went on to do a two year OND in Business Studies (with secretarial skills) at Croydon College.

Determined not to be seen as the college swat, and perhaps desperately trying to make up for all those solitary years spent cocooned in my bedroom, I metamorphosed into a 'social butterfly', with a burning desire to take South London by storm. Starting out as the 'tennis club teen', I very soon transmuted into the 'disco queen'; though really, in the words of the well-known song (from Evita) I was: "running around, trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all, I never expected it to..."

Motivated by lack of money, though secretly wishing I had held on to my artistic aspirations, I followed in my mother's footsteps and became a secretary for a year, then drifted into the Post Office to work as a Counter Clerk. It was there that I met my first husband, Bob, a musician and aspiring singer/songwriter. We tied the knot when I was 21, but the marriage lasted only three years.

Like most newly-weds, we had received many gifts for our marital home, but for me none of these equalled the old upright piano Bob's mother gave to us. Having been denied the option of taking extra-curricular music lessons during my childhood, I seized this new opportunity with both hands, working hard until I was able to write my own compositions on the stave.

Having resigned from the Post Office in 1988, I lived with my mother in a small, jointly-purchased two-bedroom terraced house in Cheltenham, where, as a mature student, I embarked on a full-time English Literature and History Degree, working part-time as an artists' model to supplement my grant. Relatively solvent, I was able to concentrate on my studies, and after three years of hard work, I left Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education with a Bachelor of Arts Degree (2:1 grade).

Unsure of what to do next, I continued working as an artists' model, all the while, harbouring a growing desire to experience life on the other side of the canvas. Then through my work I met Stuart and we married in 1994. Like me, Stuart was also an aspiring artist, so in parallel with our day jobs, we pursued and developed our art, exhibiting our works in many local exhibitions. Constantly oscillating between art, music and writing, and feeling happier and more fulfilled than ever before, I am now keen to share Carmen's World, via the Web, with the rest of the world.