Welcome to my memoir

Welcome to Memoir in Live Time

This is the beginning of an experiment—a memoir written, spoken, and shared as it happens. I’m serenity ace, a Deaf writer, artist, and disability rights advocate, inviting you to join me on this journey as I unpack my story in real time. From Scarborough to Camden, from breakdowns to breakthroughs, I’m tracing the messy, beautiful process of transformation through words, reflections, and lived experience.

This isn’t a finished narrative. It’s raw, unfinished, and evolving—because life doesn’t wait for a final draft. Thank you for walking with me.

The Road to Camden Town

Chapter one.

road trip to wales.

So I’m sat here on a sunny Saturday in April — the first real hints of good weather we’ve had this year. Spring is finally here. I’m at a log cabin called Berry Bottom, which is built partly into a hillside. Rob informs me that you can hear the sound of the nearby waterfall, but I can only hear the high-pitched shrill bird sounds — unfortunately, not the sound of the falling water cascading onto the limestone rocks below. But I feel at peace here. The owners have a naturally wild yet tamed garden — a strange phrase, but it fits — and we’ve got all the privacy you could want, yet we’re only a short walk away from milk supplies and firewood.

We booked this Airbnb to rescue our holiday and hoped to relax in the sunshine that we haven’t felt after a long, cold, dark winter — we set off with the plan of camping or sleeping in the back of the car and going to Wales. So we came well prepared for the journey.

On Wednesday, we set off in good time for my complex hearing appointment at the Listening for Life Centre in Bradford. At the hearing place, they measured my brain’s electrical activity while putting sounds into my ears. The results showed that my brain seems to perceive the same amount of sound that shows up on a standard hearing test — the kind that only checks the ear mechanism. I’m not sure what that means in terms of diagnosis or prognosis, but the audiologist was running late and said they’d write to me with an explanation and next steps.

The whole test took around two hours. I was laid back in a comfy reclining chair reading a book, while the audiologist sat at a laptop, doing her bit. Rob was with me, but he didn’t have a book, and his phone had overheated and broken on the way there, so he was getting very bored and agitated until he borrowed mine to read the news. He’d be no good modelling for portraits — having to sit for two hours with no activity is definitely a skill.

When the test was finished, we hurried back to the car, desperate for a cigarette. Two hours without a smoke is stressful, and it was the first thing we both needed. Then we set off towards the Peak District, planning to spend a night there before heading on to Wales. I was wearing my silver-blue John statement ring that I bought last time we visited the Peaks and was pondering whether to purchase another Blue John piece, as I had been reliably informed by Olivia that it would be going up in value — the Blue John is no longer being mined for, and as they say, scarcity creates value.

Anyway, we’d only gone a few miles outside Bradford when the battery light came on. Rob just said, “Oh no. Time to stop.” He knew he had a dodgy wire — he’d broken down on the way to a gig about a month earlier, and roadside recovery had patched it up. He had a few tools with him, so we pulled into a car park at the top of a hill to see if he could fix it.

There’s literally no one else in the world — apart from maybe my dad — that I could be on a road trip with, miles from home, broken down with no money, and still completely trust that we’ll survive and resolve the problem. Rob has amazing problem-solving abilities and is handy with cars and wiring and all those blokey kinds of things that I’m no good at. I sometimes joke that I do fabric, food and home decor — you do anything that has power to it.

We aren’t a traditional couple in any sense of the word. We just happen to have these skills — and to be honest, me carrying sewing needles around with me in my handbag helped us out of a previous jam when the car wouldn’t start and Rob needed to use a darning needle to hotwire the car to get us to a festival. So it kind of works. We seem to have all bases covered and would make a great team in an apocalypse.

He’d finished adjusting the dodgy wire, so he started the car by jump-starting it — rolling it down the hill. The battery light went off for a minute and we thought we were in the clear… but it came back on. After trying a few more times, he said, “We’re going to have to sleep here and go to a garage in the morning.” By then it was 7 p.m. and the garages would all be shut.

Luckily, the car park belonged to a pub, so we went in and asked if it was okay to sleep in the car overnight. I was desperate for coffee at this point, so I ordered two lattes. Rob got chatting to the barman, who told us there was a garage about a mile down the road near a rugby club, and that we should park and sleep there instead.

It turned out to be a food pub — the kind with a great menu of better than your usual pub grub to choose from. I wanted to know the soup of the day but couldn’t see it on the blackboards, so I asked the barman. He tried telling me a few times, and I was trying to guess what he was saying. My last guess — before he gave up and wrote it down — was “squid soup,” which seems unlikely.

Soup of the day was curried butternut squash. I thought it sounded lush, so I ordered that and another latte, and Rob got a burger. The soup was amazing — I’ll try to guess the recipe and make it in my Ninja when I get home.

We paid, went back to the car, jump-started it again, and rolled down the hill toward the garage. We set the bed up in the back and slept the night in the garage car park. I woke at 4 a.m. totally parched, needing a drink. I knew I’d packed plenty, but Rob couldn’t find them.

He got stressed because everything was going wrong. His phone was broken — no access to online banking — and he still hadn’t been paid for the last gig. He snapped, “I just wanna read the news,” and in that moment I felt really alone, like we weren’t on the same team. That was my first real wobble about this plan — about swapping flats with this guy in Camden Town in central London. It’s a huge move for me, from the backwards, sleepy, eroding seaside town that I’ve lived in for twenty-five years.

I suddenly panicked. Who would be my support network? What about my friends and neighbours? How would I find my way around?

It was the only wobble I’ve had about the move. The rest of the time I’ve been in a giddy state of wonderment that this opportunity has come my way. I could hit the open mic scene in Camden with my poetry. Rob could play his guitar and score gigs in London! This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day. I feel like the universe has sent the opportunity to us now because we are ready to receive it. And I feel like everything that’s gone before — even me and Rob splitting up briefly — just everything had to happen for us to get to this point.

I realised then: I can’t do this on my own. I need to be in a team with Rob. Otherwise, I’ll struggle — and the experience might be more lonely and difficult rather than freeing or a wild, fun adventure.

Since the hearing loss at Christmas — when I was at my neighbour’s having coffee and realised my hearing was worse than before — it’s been a shock. It was already quite bad, having one, what is classed as a dead ear since COVID and losing about thirty percent of hearing in my remaining good ear last summer. So to become profoundly deaf and have to rely on Live Transcribe for speech has been a lot to adjust to. I’ve come to understand I really do need proper support, even for the basic things — like taking phone calls or ordering food in a bar.

But just as I felt overwhelmed, Rob handed me a drink. I drank it, and we cuddled up and went back to sleep.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, Rob was still there, smiling away in the face of adversity as he does, and I felt OK about everything again.

The garage, though, couldn’t fit us in. So we looked on Google for the next nearest one. We only had so many miles of driving power in the battery from jump-starting it, as it wasn’t charging on its own, so we couldn’t get home. The next garage was the best option. Rob rang them and explained, and they said to come by. We did, but again — no luck. We ended up pushing the car onto a side street and calling the insurance recovery service.

A recovery guy came about an hour later, just as we were walking back to our car with chips and coffees. He towed us to a garage in Huddersfield. I zoned out in the cab of the recovery truck as it's just too hard to hear when in cars. The thing with being deaf is you can't just Interject into conversations. You rely on people physically facing you so you can understand through a combination of live transcribe, sketchy hearing and lip reading. It's a nightmare in pubs, restaurants and in cars or in a noisy town centre and shops. So I wondered to myself why deaf people always seem quiet and realised that yes it's exactly that. The recovery guy dumped us at a garage on an industrial estate, and we waited there all day until the mechanics could look at the car. Eventually, they said it needed a part that wouldn’t be available until Monday. That was still only Wednesday.

Rob said the guys didn’t seem keen to take on the job anyway. So we were stranded in Huddersfield. We pushed the car around the back of a rock climbing place — Rob had asked them and they’d agreed we could sleep in the car there.

The insurance company had basically left us high and dry, saying they couldn’t recover us back home since they’d already taken us to a garage. Here I am, deaf, unable to navigate in a strange place, and I can’t reliably hear well enough to get help — and the woman on the phone is just like a robot. A situation that demands my usual remark of: “Computer says no.”

At this point, Rob still hadn’t been paid, and the only money we had access to was the £350 I’d just been paid a few hours earlier. There was a Premier Inn nearby, but when we checked, it was £82 a night. I hate hotels anyway. I always feel like a prisoner in a hotel room — nothing but a bed, a kettle, a few sachets of sugar, tea, crap coffee, and that awful UHT milk. So I got on my phone and started looking for an Airbnb.

I found an amazing one in Bradford with a hot tub and a posh kitchen — like a proper luxury apartment. I paid for it, we got really excited, and Rob said I was awesome. We were going to take selfies in the hot tub like rockstars. Then the woman from the place phoned, and Rob answered — since I’m deaf and phone calls are difficult, especially outside. While still on the phone, he said to me, “It is in Bradford.” We were in Huddersfield.

Uh oh. I’d booked the wrong thing.

So I quickly found and booked another apartment — this time in Huddersfield — for £85. It felt very sink or swim. We could have just gotten a taxi to Bradford for £22 and had our hot tub night, but we weren’t to know. Rob still didn’t have a working phone, so we couldn’t check the money situation. An hour earlier, we only had access to £300 between us, so we can be forgiven for not realising we could have pushed the boat out.

We’d been doing so much problem-solving, constantly reacting, and we were just desperate to sit down and have a coffee. We set off walking across Huddersfield town with some of the camping stuff we’d brought along. This was Rob’s old uni town — he lived here 23 years ago for two years. As we passed by his old uni, he realised he’d been avoiding the place ever since. And yet somehow, the universe had dropped us right back here, and he had to face those old demons about flunking uni — all while on the way to our very first Airbnb.

Our holiday to Wales and the journey onward to view the flat in Camden and instruct the housing associations to start work on the transfers was on hold for another day, and we’ve ended up doing a kind of unintentional tourist exploration on this trip. We’ve had to let go of control — of the plan, the timing, the destination — and just go with the flow of wherever our circumstances take us.

****

Rob navigated us through the town centre using Google Maps. We stopped a couple of times for cigarette breaks right outside Robs old university where he studied for two years. He started talking about the trauma he’d buried since dropping out of uni. His mum had been disappointed, and I guess that’s why he’s never come back here. A bit like me — when a door closes, I just carry on and don’t look back. No regrets. But being back here meant reliving it all.

We sat on a bench surrounded by bags and belongings, chatting. I was stressed about the Airbnb. I still had no instructions on how to get the key, and the listing wasn’t clear. Rob looked it up on YouTube, and we guessed we’d need to swipe our phone somehow. We packed up again and carried on. I was marching ahead, desperate to get inside the place — our shelter for the night.

At every crossing or turn I waited, though — I had no clue where I was going. Rob kept shouting at me to slow down. Then a message finally came through on Airbnb. Phew. The host sent a photo of a key safe, a code, and a picture of the flat door with instructions. Rob said we were nearly there. I spotted a shop and told him I wanted to grab some alcohol-free beers.

I haven’t drunk alcohol for over a year and a half. I used to drink three bottles of red wine a day. I had that permanent stale alcohol smell that lingered in the air around me. I even had a stroke, and it still didn’t stop me. But three days after I got with Rob, I walked home with my bottle of wine in my bag. I put it on the side, kept busy for the day. When it got to midnight I took my meds, messaged him to say I hadn’t drunk — and that was that. I’ve not had alcohol since, I just made my mind up that I didn't want alcohol in my life nor all the bullshit that goes with it - being constantly skint, stained teeth, bad breath, toileting issues every morning plus sickness before pouring a glass and doing the same shit on yet another day. No. I'd had enough of that. This was a new start for me.

I had a bit of a relapse when me and Rob had fallen out. I was in an emotional crisis and turned to what I knew. It wasn’t every day — just a few times a week, for about a month. I’ve learned from that, though. Wine doesn’t make anything better. In fact, during that relapse I managed to lose my daughter’s cats for three days. She was distraught and I felt terribly guilty and dysfunctional. No good ever comes of it. I know that now.

***

We asked the man in the shop if we were close to the Airbnb. He took us outside and pointed across the road. I couldn't hear him because of the traffic, but it's amazing how I can get by with a lot of nonverbal communication. I must improve my deducing skills though. I mean the pottery tutor at the art school that I do portrait modelling at was trying to tell me her instagram handle. I couldn't work it out and was coming out with wild guesses. Her handle was the potter. I said I must engage my brain when trying to guess words that I'm struggling to hear. The few students that were packing away were amused by this exchange.

So i understood the pointing across the road and relieved, we dashed over. I followed the message instructions, punched in the code, opened the door — and we were in. We looked around the place. Quite amazed that we had bagged this at such short notice. It was way better than sleeping in the back of the car in some random carpark. We had a kitchen, living room, TV and a bathroom and a real bed.

I’d brought chilli con carne for the camping trip, packed in Chinese takeaway cartons. I bulk buy them from Amazon as me and rob have an arrangement where I shop for food and meal prep for him for gig weekends and he gives me cash for the ready meals. It works for us. I over shop for food from trauma from when I was having an MH episode back in 2007 and I didn't fill in a tax credits renewal form. I was so poorly that all I knew was there was no money in the bank and I ran out of food. My daughter was five at this point and I woke up one morning. Looked in the fridge and cupboards. I Realized something was wrong and I wasn't coping. So I rang the doctor's surgery and asked if I could have my daughter adopted as I wasn't doing a good job of looking after her. This must have flagged up as strange with the doctors surgery receptionist and within an hour I had doctors and social workers standing in my flat telling me I had to go to hospital and I had to find someone to look after my daughter. I arranged for her to stay with my aunt.

So anyway. I now have food trauma and have two freezers stocked full at all times and cupboards full. I joke that it's preparation for the apocalypse. Anyway we heated it up, plated it, and sat at the table to eat. We had refuge, even if just for the night, and no plan beyond checkout at eleven a.m.

I poured my alcohol-free beer into a wine glass. When I raised it to my lips and smelled lager, I panicked. I double-checked the bottle — definitely zero. I exhaled and took a sip.

We talked about the madness of the day, then decided to run a bath and keep the conversation going and come up with a plan for tomorrow.