Salamanders Young Burn Survivors > Home Page > About me

So, you want to know something about me, do you? I'm flattered! My name is Sylvia, and I'm a happily-married housewife, mother of five, and grandmother of two.

I was born in Wales, and lived in a little village there until I was nine years old. In 1966, my father got a different job, and the three of us (my mother, my father, and myself) went to live in Cheshire. We weren't there for very long, because the company my father worked for sent him to Portugal, and my mother and I went with him.

From 1967 until 1970, we lived in Cascais, a town near Lisbon in Portugal. I went to a little fee-paying school, which was close enough to our house for me to walk to and from school each day (but not quite close enough for me to go home for lunch, so I used to take sandwiches and eat them on the nearby beach!).

There were only a dozen or so pupils over the age of nine at St George's School, so, although we were taught as a group in some subjects (art, general science, geography, history, and Portuguese), we studied English, French, Latin, and maths from text-books, each pupil working at his or her own level. I liked studying from text-books, and did much better in those subjects than I did in the others!

It was in Portugal, at the factory where my father was working, that I first saw a computer. It looked something like this. I was very impressed, and never imagined that, thirty years in the future, I would actually have a computer in my own home!

When I was thirteen, we came back to the UK. For the next three years, I went to West Kirby Grammar School for Girls, where I passed GCE O-levels in English language, English literature, French, Latin, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics (and failed my German O-level). I didn't much like being at an all-girls school, because I'd always been a bit of a tomboy and didn't get on very well with other girls, so I didn't stay at the Grammar School to study for A-levels. Instead, I enrolled at a College of Further Education when I was sixteen, leaving there two years later with an O-level in Geology and an A-level in Maths and Statistics.

I have worked on a hen-farm, as a stage-hand, as a housemother in a residential home for children, and in an office as a clerk/telephonist, but since 1981 I have been a full-time housewife.

In 1981, when I was twenty-four, I got married, and my husband and I moved to Cornwall. Since then, I have lived in the same Victorian house overlooking the River Tamar, in the town of Saltash.

I have had five children: Francesca, Wayne, Quinn, Amanda, and Gordon. It's lucky we have a big house, because Wayne is the only one who's moved out! Francesca is now a full-time mother herself, and the addition of her little daughter makes ours a three-generation household! Wayne works in Saltash, but lives on the other side of the River Tamar, with his partner and their young son. Quinn presently works for a construction company, Amanda is looking for a permanent full-time job, and Gordon has recently started working for a local publican.

My main hobbies are reading, country walks, and the Internet (not necessarily in that order). I have loved books almost as long as I can remember, and now have over a thousand in my home library. My parents introduced me to the pleasures of walks in the countryside when I was just a toddler, and I have been lucky enough to have lived most of my life in places with stretches of open countryside within walking distance of home. Since my introduction to the Internet in 1999, it has become my main source of information and entertainment, as well as my major hobby.

I owe a big debt to the Internet, because, after the breakup of my marriage, I met my present husband in an online chatroom. He was then living hundreds of miles away from me, and we got to know each other via an online private messenger. He even proposed to me online! So, it's thanks to the Internet that I'm now happily married to my beloved Tommi.

I presently have three websites online. As well as Salamanders Young Burn Survivors, I run Welcome to Saltash and Sylvia's Snapshots:

I'm working on a couple of new websites, too: a personal site, and one about the myths and legends of Cornwall.

Making websites and running them properly takes up a lot of time, so, when I'm not eating, sleeping, or doing chores, I now spend more time at my computer than anywhere else (with a big mug of tea beside me and sometimes a cat in my lap).

... and that's about all I can think of to tell you (and probably more than you wanted to know)! If there is anything else you're curious about, do let me know. Thank you for visiting, and take care 'out there', won't you?