Standing in that shop, and in front of Tam himself, I was suddenly 8 years old again, getting ready to catch the wind for the first time. Those eyes giving me the once over, and that voice, oh that voice...

"Are you old enough to buy these?" He almost barked.

"es..." I meakly replied in such a mousey voice, the wind could have drowned it.

Those few seconds, felt like years as he stood there and then off to the counter, where he wrapped them in a brown paper bag and as I handed over my £16.99 in old money, he looked over his glasses and handed me the bag.

My journey of Tarot had begun, and the first of over 100 decks was now in my 16 year old hand, and by this time I had bolted from the shop, terrified and excited all at the same time.

Yet, my biggest and probably longest running prophecy had still to be made...

The remianing teenage years, certaintly got interesting, as not long after 16, I entered and left my first ever college course within 9 month, due to certain pressures on men being nursery nurses, and colleges in those days didn't have a backbone.

Nor did they know how to deal with a kid like me back then, learning differences weren't diagnosed or recognised, for me they wouldn't be discovered for another 8 years.

However, I did manage to get my Core Mathematics Level 4 and Communications Level 3 during my  17th year, which allowed me to do Media Studies. 

It was during that 18th year, where I spent more time in the college canteen during my National Certificate in Computing, that I had my first experience of reading the cards for another.

By this time the collection had grown by 2, and I had 3 decks, the Mythic Deck, was the one that I used for the reading, where I brought peace to a mother, who had been visiting readers for some time and received no reassurance or peace from each visit.

Yet, the brief time that we spent gave her everything that she needed. It also opened me up to wanting to discover more and develop my abilities better.

I began visiting the local Spiritualist Church, who frowned upon the use of Tarot, while practicing Tarot behind closed doors! 

They were good enough to help me develop and find my feet spiritually, but at the same time I was drawn to working and learning with the cards, so in essence in the Celtic Cross, spirituality and divination were crossing each other.

So for a little while I put the cards aside, and used words in the form of story telling to gain insight into other peoples lives, except for most of the time in college, it was their sex lives they were so keen to share.

They were scandelous at the time, but tame by todays standard of erotic fiction! Yet, for a while, the loved having their sex lives fictionalised. 

True, I loved being the author of their fiction, and from what I gathered it was a useful aid to get some of them in the mood for each other...

By the age of my 20's I had grown my deck into double figures, departed from the Spiritual Church Movement, had a vision of my then Girl Friend (yes, a girl friend) playing bouncy, bouncy with another guy, oh and decided to come out.

I had also moved into the more darker times, which you'll likely remember from the last hop we did together, this was the era where my Dragon Tarot, was removed by the Oh Gods of Tarot, because I was abusing their gifts.  

Returning to the West Coast was the start of another cycle in some respects. 

As I headed towards my middle 20's, I had met my Wiccan Mentor, who showed me there was a way to merge my spirituality, card reading, and other gifts together... Except, that as it would turn out, I wasn't a suitable canditate for her inner sanctum sanctorum.

I met my husband to be and my collection of Tarot grew again and it was reaching almost 40 decks by this point. I had started working and using my gifts, I had my small stall in a hairdressers some miles away, and that gave me an income, but all good things must eventually come to their end.

As I arrived into my 30's I decided to go pro and opened up my shop. It was only meant to reading cards, but it became a place for the disenfranchised, lost, and alone to visit. It became a place for the lonely hearts to try and find love, it also became the place where those with no talent tried to steal it from others, and also reclaim the place they once had owned.

I swear it was its own telenovella, if I had thought about it, I would have turned wordsmith on the quiet days and written at least a series of novels and a television mini series based on the amount of backstabbing and skull duggery that went on in that place.