My daughter Ruth left school in 1979 after one year in the sixth form at Bromley High School. She had, from an early age, decided on a career in nursing but before her training at Ormskirk Hospital she took a gap year, working as a volunteer for the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV). After qualifying as a nurse she then volunteered as a cook on Fair Isle before going to St Marys to qualify as a midwife. Soon after this she married Jeff Redgrave and went to live in Lancashire; thereafter to the Midlands and to Suffolk as her husband took new employment opportunities