I guess this journey started January 2012 when, after a disastrous 2011 at work which saw my boss being let go, most of the management team fighting amongst themselves and an unrealistic workload for me personally, I walked into the house I’d owned for 10 years, and rented out for 3 to cover the mortgage, after it was vacated without notice by its tenants.

The house had been ‘managed’ by an agent and the scene of utter devastation that greeted me when I walked into the disaster area that had once been my home, tipped me completely over the edge. Think a cream carpet that was now brown, cockroaches under the fridge, and a back door which had been smashed through and not replaced.

In hindsight it was probably that the agent was also showing a potential tenant round this hellhole which made me have ‘my little breakdown’. Needless to say I went into autopilot, fired the agent there and then, put the house on the market the same day and hotfooted it out of London back to Brighton, and my doctors!!!

Strangely he diagnosed stress related depression and wouldn’t let me go back to work till I was better. He prescribed complete rest and anti depressants….yeah right!!!

Lets talk about Me and pills
I’ve mentioned before that I have various weight related illnesses!! What this boils down to is that at any one time I’m taking pills for Diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis in my spine, oh and pills so my stomach doesn’t rot away because of all the pills I’ve been taking, and he wanted me to take MORE???

I thought I knew best, I wasn’t really depressed, I’d just had a bad year, just needed a bit of rest, just needed a break from everything. I wasn’t one of those not leave the house, pill popping freaks you see in documentaries….not me!!

So I struggled through!! Looked up pill outcomes on the Internet and told the doc what he wanted to hear, threw myself into “getting better” and then came the point when I convinced myself that getting better meant changing my life…so what did I do?

I resigned! The house had sold, I had money in the bank, we decided to buy an old ice cream van and start a business, I threw money at the problem and hoped it would go away. I knew I couldn’t go back to work and sought a return to my childhood in order to get through this..what was I really turning to? Yes you guessed it…food!!!

And not just any food, Food I couldn’t have, Ice Cream!!!