A bit about Naomi

Naomi's a Londoner originally, like me but when she was an infant her parents moved to Scotland and she was brought up in Ayrshire. When she and I first met, her parents were living in a lovely house in Largs on the Ayrshire coast from which they got lovely views of Cumbrae. Naomi was living in Halewood with her ex when we met in 1990. Shortly after that, her family moved to Saltcoats, further down the Clyde Estuary, where we also ended up in 2008.

Naomi has worked in the past in care homes, a shirt factory, and spent a while working for the Social Services care pool in Bury. Naomi doesn't enjoy good health, though: she has asthma (and now COPD), is diabetic and suffers from depression. Unfortunately her health deteriorated to the extent that she had to give working up. She is very much into computer gaming, enjoys the garden enormously, and these days loves getting out on her mobility scooter to walk the dogs. Oh, and she loves shopping (as long as she can rest up frequently, normally in a cafe) LOL.

Pets

Naomi has always been completely into animals and pets and she had worked for a while at Kennels and even a safari park as a teenager. It's always been something of a battle to keep our menagerie within sensible limits.

At one point we had 3 dogs, a cat, a number of budgies, 2 parrots, 2 large (6'x2'x2') fishtanks, a cat and a pond full of Koi in the back garden - oh, and I forgot the hamsters and the stick-insects! LOL. She's always been brilliant with animals (and with kids, too).

25 years later and not much has changed, but we're now down to the African Grey Parrot, a standard poodle and a Yorkie. That doesn't stop Naomi from wanting to adopt, steal or acquire nearly every mammal, bird or reptile she sees, ranging from leopards to dolphins LOL!!

Narrowboat Art

When we met my family still had our 50' narrowboat, Rambling Rose. Naomi quickly found an affinity for narrowboat art and learned the techniques necessary to produce this very colourful stylised form of painting.

Rambling Rose more several panels of her work. Our house is still decorated with some of her best pieces and she painted some interior panels for one of the trip boats that operate around Manchester on the Bridgewater Canal.

For several years we would head out to craft fairs and Canal Festivals around the North of England, as far apart as Nottingham & York to the Lake District and Preston. Naomi had mixed results: Inevitably she attracted the most interest at Canal Festivals. We'd also always be on the lookout for plain crockery, brass ornaments and the like for her to paint

Arts and crafts is an itch she occasionally has to scratch and she's become proficient at quite a few different things over the years (Latch-hook, Parchment Craft, PunchCraft etc). The narrowboat is long gone, but Naomi's canal art still brightens up our home.

Dog Obedience

Animals are always her main interest, though, and with Zoe, our second standard poodle Naomi threw herself into competitive dog obedience. Doing this with a poodle is not the easiest thing because they are quite aloof and not as eager to please as some other breeds like border collies. In the end Naomi's asthma limited how much she could do, but it's a fascinating and very rewarding hobby. Unfortunately Zoe got killed some years ago (she was chased out of the park by a pair of bull mastiffs and was hit by a car). We managed without dogs for a few years and then Pepper (another poodle) and Scampi (a Yorkie) entered our lives.

Naomi started to get into Heelwork to Music and trained for a couple of years with Heather Smith (Crufts HTM and Freestyle winner), who lives just down the road in Troon. Naomi's health would never permit her to do Heelwork to Music competitively, but she still loves getting the dogs to do tricks.

Scuba Diving

Naomi has her ups and downs. In recent years she's suffered from bouts of severe depression to add from the poor general health that has always been her lot, but she keeps battling on. Besides horse-riding she has also done quite a few dives in Crete and Tenerife. Her asthma limits what she can safely do but we have some priceless pictures of her playing with octopuses etc even if she has to stay above a depth of about 10 metres.

Horses

Horses are another animal with whom Naomi has always been in love. For a while (before we met) she loaned her sister's horse and we've been riding a few times over the years. Recently, though, the time seemed right to scratch that particular itch and we bought Murphy, a wonderful 17 hand Irish sports horse.

Murphy was a tad on the big side for Naomi (but perfect for me!!) and so the sexy Romeo came into our lives a [very] short time later. Romeo is a Chestnut Belgian Warmblood gelding , 16 hands tall and a Grade C showjumper. He was definitely king of the hill [well he thought so, anyway] at the stables in Urmston where we kept both of the boys.

In due course we sold the boys and acquired Midnight, a black Dales X, for Naomi. Midnight surprised us by turning out to be in foal and she eventually produced Jazz, who brightened our lives for a few months before we passed him on to someone who would do a much better job of bringing him on.

Midnight came to Scotland when we moved there, but eventually Naomi's health deteriorated to the extent that she had to give riding up, for the most part. We sold Midnight to an American woman who wanted to do the Lands End to John o' Groats trip on horseback. That trip never happened, unfortunately, but we have no knowledge of where Midnight ended up after that.
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