Memoirs of an Ordinary Psychic

By L. I. Webster

Born in 1944, I've always been aware of Spiritual Energies. I grew up in a family where Spiritual Phenomena was the norm. Most days I have some reminder I'm on a Spiritual Path. The book records the more exiting, disquieting, and rewarding bits.

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I discovered natural medicine in 1983. Conventional medicine failed to cure a tropical illness I developed in Africa. I made a spectacular recovery thanks to Reflexology. I studied at the London branch of the 'International Institute of Reflexology'. Fortunately my Tutor was Tony Porter.

www.artreflex.com

I've worked as a professionally qualified therapist for 30 years, with clinics in Derbyshire and The Lake District.

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For more information, client testimonials, please click on www.ordinary-psychic.co.uk

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785077999

Book preview

Doubt

1. Alice

Granny Alice told fortunes ... and was a ‘layer-outer’ for the Co-op Undertaker.

She’d the presence of a duchess, with a unique sense of fashion, mainly foraged from flea markets.

We lived in a tiny two up, two down, terraced house in Barnsley; part of a row climbing a steep cobbled hill to the White Bear Pub.

The roaring fire, Grans only means of cooking, turned the house into a sauna, so indoors she wore a cotton wrap-around with just her bloomers underneath. She seemed constantly basting meat in the coal oven. Or picking soot out of the vegetables, bubbling in black-bottomed pans on the bare coals. Forever wiping her brow with a cloth slung over her shoulder.

The house shimmered with love and the aroma of good food.

After much nagging, Granddad Len bought Alice a gas ring. It had a high curved aluminium splash-back, and an orange rubber pipe which pushed onto where the gaslight was before we went electric. There was a constant smell of gas, and Gran regularly beat out flames running up the greasy pipe ... but nothing short of an explosion would have stopped her using it.

In 1949, when I was 5, winter snow and frost seemed the norm. Before the morning fire was lit, there’d be beautiful frost-etched ferns on the inside of my bedroom window.

One winter morn, a tall handsome gentleman helped me blow on the glass to melt the frost. I wasn’t afraid. I somehow ‘knew’ his name. When I told Alice I’d seen Jack, she cried.

I later learned that Jack was her first husband, my mother’s father, who’d died before I was born.

It’s only now I understand the full extent of Gran’s workload. Along with heavy daily chores, a steady stream of ordered cakes would pass through the ancient coal oven; the door of which had to be kept shut with a pick-handle spragged against the fender. This really annoyed Alice, and she’d bang the oven door till the whole house shook.

Gran made sure I grew up with a legacy of wonderful meals served on a huge table covered with a red oilcloth. It was also her work-top for preparing food … smoothing Len’s shirts with a flat-iron heated on the fire … and telling fortunes.

All other than sleeping happened in this tiny room, including a weekly plosh in a tin bath brought in from the coalhouse. The bath water was heated in big pans on the fire. Lack of space must have been a nightmare for the grown-ups, but I found comfort in its closeness. It certainly didn’t hinder the stream of people passing through.

Gran had lots of friends who came to have their fortunes told. She read the cards, and talked to Spirit People.

My prevailing memories are of bright tarot cards, whistling chirruping budgies, pots and pots of orange-hued tea ... and me playing ‘The Umbrella Man’ on the out of tune piano Mrs Dobby gave us.

I was five when I saw Alice ‘lay out’ Mrs Dobby who lived two doors up from us. If Len was at work she’d have to take me, so I was witness to a lot of these sad, silent ministrations.

The memory of Mrs Dobby’s ‘passing’ is still very clear ... I was in Mrs Dobby’s house, sitting on a tiny stool next to the parrot cage, empty since the old parrot died a year before. Gran was putting a white frilly nightgown on this big ‘doll’ on the truckle bed under the window.

And there, (in my eyes anyway), was ‘Mrs Dobby,’ standing by the cage, whistling and talking to a brightly coloured parrot. Percy coughed and swore just as he’d done before he’d died.

I shouted out … Mrs Dobby’s talking to the birdie, Granny, and it’s swearing just like Percy.

The screech from Mrs Dobby’s daughter frightened me … but Alice understood, and put her finger on her lips. I didn’t speak again, although ‘Mrs Dobby’ chatted on for ages.

2. Harriet

Dad’s Mum Harriet was a tiny Welsh widow who talked to Angels ... and had a bathroom with hot water.

Harriet lived in Chesterfield in a big posh house near Boythorpe cemetery where Granddad Harry was buried. There were lilac trees at the bottom of the garden, which along with roses and honeysuckle perfumed the long summer days. I’d play all day among vibrant colours, aromas, and shimmering butterflies and bees.

My favourite game was hiding in a laurel bush, eating stolen currants and chatting with the fairy folk. Harriet never called me a silly girl.

When we took flowers to Harry, I’d ask Gran about the stone lady with wings, perched on the grave of a little boy. And each time she’d tell me the same thing ... That’s Robin’s angel looking after him while he’s asleep. We all have an angel who looks after us.

Gran peered through tiny round tortoiseshell specs, and wore high-heeled ankle boots which she fastened with a button-hook. She liked long skirts and twin-sets, and a tweed coat for outdoors; usually topped off with a unique millinery creation. I’ve a vivid memory of one hat, which had a large stuffed blue-bird … wings spread in supplication … clinging upside down to the crown of a huge black fedora. The poor creature bobbed and swayed in precarious tempo with Harriet’s high-heeled steps. It took the attention of all who saw it, and conversations would be addressed to the hat, rather than Harriet.

Gran was a passionate animal lover and preferred them to people. The coal-man’s horse knew she was a pushover, and looked forward to Harriet’s tit-bits. Once when she’d missed her cue, the old boy plodded up the drive to the front door, dragging cart, gate, and half the fence with him. Snorting and stomping for his snack.

I remember falling off my little bike into a bed of nettles, and a laughing Harriet rubbing my blistered limbs with dock leaves. Margery, Father’s Welsh cousin was visiting at the time. She sat me on her knee and her cuddles took my pain away.

Gran’s Welsh family were Spiritualists and Healers. I accepted everything then as the norm. But now realise how blessed I was that my family nurtured all my gifts.

To stretch her pension, Gran took clients for elocution lessons. I endured constant correction of my accent, always bad after holidays with Alice. Teased by my Barnsley friends for talking ‘posh’, then scolded by Harriet for my resulting Yorkshire twang … made life tricky.

3. Growing Up

Both these amazing ladies brought me up from the age of four when my Father disappeared. We never saw him again. Welfare as we know it now didn’t exist in 1948, so Mum had to go to work.

During school terms I lived in Chesterfield with my wacky Welsh Granny, and spent weekends with Mum.

In school holidays I escaped to Barnsley and my beloved Alice. Barnsley streets were always full of kids, and I was allowed to get gloriously dirty. I played in wooden clogs (clompers), hand made to fit my feet by the local cobbler. He’d let me choose the colour of the leather uppers. I’d take a washed out tin can which he’d cut into strips and nail round the edge.

Granddad Len was Alice’s second husband. He was a wonderful role-model in my growing years. The fact I’m a reasonably balanced adult’s mainly due to him.

I loved Len. He was a joyful, hard working, hard drinking miner, who clattered home in clogs, his face covered in coal muck. His job must have been a nightmare for Alice, as every drop of hot water was heated on the fire.

Alice’s house lost its outside lavatory in 1942 … courtesy of the Luftwaffe. Along with other buildings it was flattened by a stray bomb offloaded from an air-raid on Sheffield. Several families used the one remaining WC, a route march across a bombsite which had once been homes. We had night-time Po’s under the bed. Mine was blue enamel with a black rim. My most dreaded chore was emptying them into a bucket, which Len would carry across the bombsite to the lavvy.

Once a bout of sciatica confined Len to bed, and Gran and I struggled across the rubble with the full bucket. My sensibilities were offended when Alice screamed with laughter at my pirouettes to avoid the sloshing pee.

Granddad’s sciatica seemed to