Not What I Signed Up For: An Autobiographical Account of Family, Love, Loss, Betrayal, Travel and Resilience - and on-line dating for the over-50s

This is an autobiographical account of an elderly twice-married widow who has always wanted to write as well as to travel. She describes her teenage relationships, which didn't last, her time at a Church of England teacher training college in the early 1960s, and her first marriage to a man who considered it 'clever' not to earn sufficient money. She details how, together, they established and ran an art gallery in the Norfolk countryside, and began a manufacturing jewellery business. Her first husband abandons her and their three children, for another woman, leaving her needing to sell their homes after various disasters in order to pay off several bank loans. She teaches the three children at home before being able to admit them into local schools. She and the children move into a workshop before being able to buy their own home. Through her role as a teacher of Traveller children, she meets a man who becomes her second husband. They are very happy and often travel abroad together, until he has an affair and develops cancer. Following his death and seeking a soul-mate, she joins an internet dating site which helps her to determine her identity, only to discover that what her dates want is quite different from what she is seeking. She continues to travel, finds her own home and develops friendships with long-forgotten college colleagues. The Covid pandemic curtails her travels but offers her uninterrupted time for creative writing, with encouragement from friends and her younger daughter.

Born towards the end of the Second World War, Lorna is the unplanned youngest child of three in a non-conformist Christian family. Her parents and grandmother hoped she would show a high degree of musical talent: they were disappointed. Having failed to get into the University of her choice, she gained her teacher training Certificate of Education from Canterbury Christ Church College and taught primary school-aged children in Kent and Norfolk, before shocking her parents by forming a liaison with a married father of three children. She married him and supported his wish to be a studio potter by helping him to establish and run an art and craft gallery. Having been awarded an honorary degree by Canterbury Christ Church University in 2012, she gained a Masters degree in Biography and Creative Non-Fiction from the University of East Anglia in 2018. Lorna remains interested in history, foreign travel and wildlife, because they each feed her curiosity. She loves her black retriever-cross-spaniel dog called Ramsey.