This book is my life story told the way I actually lived it: raw, chatty, and stubbornly full of animals. It follows me from a quiet, animal‑mad kid who never really fit in with people, through a brain illness that nearly took everything, to a woman whose whole world has been built around feathers, fur, claws and paws.
From the very beginning, it was clear I understood animals a lot better than I understood humans. While other kids were chasing each other around playgrounds, I was happier in the garden with Penny the family dog and any creature I could persuade my parents to let me have. For my sixth birthday, my uncle turned up with four battery hens, long before anyone talked about “rescue chickens.” Meg, Elsie, Colleen and Erica were scruffy and half bald, but to me they were perfect. Erica died that first day, which was my earliest lesson that loving animals means losing them too. Elsie quickly became something else entirely: she would sprint to my bike, hop onto the handlebars and ride with me up the alley, even waiting outside shops like a feathery little bodyguard. People could not believe she was not tied on.
Those early chapters show the world through that child’s eyes: a back alley that led to a man with racing pigeons; the shock of seeing him almost kill one that would not fly in; the blur of relief and pride when I shouted up and ended up with my first pigeon instead. That single moment opened a door into a whole hidden community of pigeon fanciers. They took me seriously when a lot of people did not, put a pigeon loft on my map of the world, and handed me two Birmingham rollers, Blackie and Brownie, so I could have birds to fly. I write about how it felt to stand in a small garden, neck craned back, watching them circle over the neighbours’ roofs and always, always come home for their tea.
Then encephalitis hit when I was ten years old in 1989, and everything changed. One minute I was riding my bike with a chicken on the front and my pigeons overhead. The next, I was in a hospital bed and my whole body had turned into a stranger. I lost my voice, my balance, my eyesight, my hearing. I went from being able to run and cycle to not being able to walk properly at all. In these chapters I go into the details most people gloss over: the fear, the humiliation, the strange floating feeling of being there but not really there. I describe the sounds, or lack of them, the way the lights hurt, the way it felt to try to talk and realise nothing was coming out.
I am honest about the anger too. I talk about lying there wondering if I would ever go home, if my animals would remember me, and whether life was even going to be worth it if my body stayed like this. I describe the long slow drag of rehab, learning to do basics again, stumbling and clinging to anything solid, and the strange numbness of people talking over you like you are furniture.
When I finally went home, nothing was simple. I could not ride my bike anymore, so Elsie’s magic handlebar rides ended, and she went back to being “just” a chicken scratching around the garden. I could not safely let Blackie and Brownie out myself, so Mum and Dad stepped in, and I watched them the way I now watched life, from a distance. When a neighbour’s cat killed the pigeons, it felt like another little set of wings torn off the life I used to have. Gradually, the original chickens died too, and the garden went quieter than I liked to admit.
The book does not hurry past that time. I sit in the slow grief of it and talk about what it is really like to be a child whose body no longer does what it is told, who already preferred animals and now feels even more pushed out from people. Mum and Dad are there throughout, steady and practical, holding my world together while I am learning to live inside this new body that will never quite walk right again.
As the years move on, the story stays strictly chronological, but always through the lens of animals. New chickens and silkies arrive in a coop, bringing back the cluck and bustle of life. Then three ducks appear, named Rag, Tag and Bobtail, and I describe the simple joy of letting them out each morning and having them waddle behind me to their little pond at the side of the house. Watching them swim was like watching my own mind calm down.
The internet creeps in as I grow older, and with it my obsession with barn owls. When I learn their numbers are dropping, I decide I want to help. I find someone with owls and bring home Scratch and Screech, setting them up in a big aviary with a nest box. The plan is to breed them and release their young through an official scheme. It never quite works out that way, but the chapters that follow capture what it meant just to live with them, to hear them screech at night and feel honoured when their wild cousins dropped in to call.
Then there are the hand reared babies. First Ollie, just two days old in a cardboard box next to my bed, me waking every four hours round the clock to feed him tiny day old chicks. He has splayed legs, and a vet visit meant to save him ends up killing him instead. That loss cuts deep, and I write about that guilt plainly. Soon after comes Tyto, a week old barn owl chick named after the Latin for his species. Tyto grows into a fiercely loyal bird who will sit quietly on my shoulder yet threaten anyone who comes too close. I take him in and out of his aviary every day, letting him fly the full stretch of the garden on his line between bench and bow perch. Those scenes are told in the present tense so you can see the tilt of his head, feel the weight of him on my arm, sense the pride of knowing that even though my body is broken, he trusts me completely.
When a neighbour complains about the late‑night noise, the council turns up. I describe the worry that we might be forced to give Scratch and Screech up, and the strange mixture of relief and bitterness when the council accepts that the wild owls contribute to the racket too. In the end, I choose to rehome Scratch and Screech anyway, purely to avoid sparking an endless war with someone who was never going to accept us. Tyto stays on for a few more years until he dies of old age. Losing him feels like losing a part of myself.
After that, the story moves into the aviary years. We fill a twelve foot by six foot aviary with budgies, canaries, lovebirds, zebra finches, rosy bourkes, coloured doves and cockatiels. I describe rescuing one cockatiel whose wings had been butchered, his skin cut so he could not fly. I build him a ladder so he can climb off the floor up to the perches where he belongs. Little acts like that, quiet and fiddly and patient, become the backbone of how I show love.
There is the sad brown rosella in a too small cage at a local pet shop, tail missing, feathers dull. I talk about how I could not leave him there, how I convinced Mum and Dad to bring him home, how I spoiled him with extra millet and time. Over a year, his tail grows back and his feathers explode into colour. His transformation mirrors pieces of my own.
My favourite aviary birds are not the flashiest ones but the quail padding around on the floor. They turn their beaks up at dropped seed and make me put fresh food down for them, and I do, gladly. I describe the soft, low crow of the males, a sound that comforted me in ways people’s words never did.
Then comes one of the hardest cruelty chapters. We go on holiday for a week, leaving a neighbour to pop in and feed the birds. When we come home, every bird is dead, lined up on the floor by size. We can never prove who did it, but our horrible neighbour next door is the only one we suspect. In those pages, I write about shock breaking into fury, about how it feels when someone deliberately kills the only beings that make you feel understood. That is the moment I decide I will never fill an outdoor aviary again.
The book also captures the lighter, odd stories, like Mickey the escape artist hamster who refused to be caged, building his own nest in a jam jar in the meat cupboard and commuting secretly up and down the wall cavity to raid his old cage for food and water. There is humour in it, because there has to be, but it always comes with tenderness.
After the aviary massacre, there is a quiet stretch with no animals at all, just nest boxes with cameras and online diaries about blue tits raising chicks. It is my attempt to cope without any creatures in the house, and it nearly breaks me. I describe the restlessness, the way the silence whispers at me, until I cannot take it anymore. That is when ferrets walk into my life.
Finding information on the internet about ferrets, I become obsessed. Dad is wary, convinced ferrets bite and stink, because that was all he knew growing up. I spend a week gently wearing him down until he agrees to visit a rescue. We intend to adopt one ferret but come home from South Staffs Ferret Rescue with a pair, Bill and Ben, because ferrets hate being alone. Bill is a little bulldozer, bowling through life, and Ben is a serial biter we somehow adore anyway.
The ferret chapters are the heart of the middle of the book. What starts with Bill and Ben soon expands. We go back and add Bubbles, Bambi, Chuckles and more. We even cut a holiday short because we miss them so much while they are boarding at Mercia Ferret Welfare in Coventry. When we turn up to collect them, there is an extra ferret in the cage who has bonded with ours. We are asked if we want to foster her and say yes without really thinking how far that “yes” will go.
From there, our home turns into T.C.R Ferrets, the Telford branch of Mercia Ferret Welfare. We take in sick and elderly ferrets so that the main rescue has space for the healthy ones who are easier to rehome. The local vets learn we are “the ferret people” and start ringing us whenever an unwanted ferret turns up. The RSPCA local branch calls. Ordinary people ring to ask if we can take animals they are about to give up on.
I recount as many of their names and personalities as memory will allow, a roll call of small lives that mattered: Bill, Ben, Beano, Bambi, Yishka, Blaze, Mrs Johnson, Amicus, Woody, Diggy, Chippy, Charlie, Shane, William, Taz, Miffle, Merlin, Oscar, Drix, Ralph, Chucky, Biscuit, Mariah, Al Capone, Sandy, Bobby, Casey, Snowy, Wiggy, Monte, Bodget, Scarper, Morris, Peaches, Pompom, Wesley, Janie, Jill, Teasle, Tinsel, Polo, Humbug, Mrs Mitt, Scooby, Mr Mitt, Asda, Flipper, Nipper, Benio, Huggy, Pex, Marmite, Netty, Phoenix, Pandora, Ozzy, Robbie, PJ, Sparkle, Chaz, Dave, Daveid, Ann, Toast, Nook, Magic, Salt, Pepper, Shuger, Nushka, Maverick, Tiny, Sophie, Neil, Amealia, Dellboy, Rodney, Chance and many more. Each name is a reminder that even “small” animals have whole worlds inside them.
These chapters show daily life in ferret rescue: medications, vet trips, the smell of bedding, the bruises from playful nips, the heartbreak of saying goodbye when age or illness finally wins. I am honest about exhaustion and about how, even then, I preferred ferret company over most humans. At the same time, I am proud of what we built. T.C.R Ferrets gave my life structure, purpose and a reason to get out of bed on the days when my balance was bad or my mood darker than I liked to admit.
The book then follows me and my parents as life shifts again. We eventually move to a bungalow in 2017, bringing the last of the ferrets with us. One by one, they die, and no new ones come to fill their cages. I talk about what it is like to walk past an empty ferret shed and feel the echo of bodies that are no longer there. The grief is heavy enough that I cannot stand looking at the empty cages, so Mum and Dad help me rip them all out. The shed that was once Ferret Lodge becomes my office, with a computer, my scam baiting projects and my miniature painting. It looks different on purpose, so I am not constantly staring at a ghost of what used to be.
Today, my animal world is smaller but no less important. The book closes with my life in the bungalow with two dogs: Buster, a six year old French bulldog, and Bonnie, an eight year old Staffordshire bull terrier. I describe a normal week, the way my unsteady balance shapes what I can and cannot do, my anxiety about going out in public, my ongoing awkwardness with people. I talk about scam baiting on the computer, painting, the way I plan my days around what my body will manage and where Buster and Bonnie fit into it all.
The final chapters are reflective without pretending everything is perfect. I am clear about the challenges: not being able to walk properly even after all these years, getting tired easily, still feeling out of step with the human world. But I am just as clear about what has held me together. From Penny and the chickens to pigeons, ducks, barn owls, budgies, quail, hamsters and ferrets, animals have been the steady heartbeat under every difficult year.
I end by thanking them. Not in a fluffy way, but in the most literal sense. After encephalitis, there were dark times when I was not sure I wanted to stick around in a body that felt broken and a world that often felt cruel. The animals kept me here. They gave me jobs that had to be done, mouths that needed feeding, eyes and beaks and noses that looked at me like I mattered. They taught me that you can lose nearly everything and still make a good life out of whatever is left.
“Not A People Person” is for anyone who has ever felt more at home with animals than with people, anyone who has lived in a body that will not follow the usual rules, anyone who has loved and lost pets and wondered if the pain is worth it. It is my answer: yes, it hurts, and yes, it is worth it. Every time.
