I retired from my last job in 1995, having decided to start training as a counsellor so that I might have something interesting and useful to do for the rest of my life. This first occurred to me whilst we were living in Scotland and I helped set up a refuge for Asian women near Kilmacolm. I mostly worked in the office in the village and often had to listen to distraught male relatives on the phone, a role for which I felt inadequate. Back in Bristol two years later I applied to do a basic counselling course at what was then the School of Education -and there, over the years, I learned to think differently, work collaboratively and write narra tively because I still have stories to tell.