I Don't Like Pie and Mash or Jellied Eels!

March 1st 2011 was a day I will never forget. It was the day my husband passed away, not unexpectedly, after a long illness.

It was also the day that I had returned to Stepney after thirty years. I was accompanying my daughter to an interview at the same university I had looked at from my bedroom window as a child.

The emotions of that day, although traumatic, eventually gave way to reflections about the person I had become and the events that had transpired to bring me to this point.

It began with events of my childhood in Stepney: some strange and absurd, some sad, some positively horrific, but many had been happy, hilarious and fondly remembered. Everything that ever happened, had been brought to life by the colourful, quirky characters, on whom these stories are loosely based, and seen through the eyes of a child.