‘This is one lucky cat,’ said the woman behind the counter as I piled up the new cat basket, the scratch post, the feeding bowl, the cat litter tray and all the etc., etc.  I smiled to myself.  In the house, Monty immediately took a shit on the carpet smack in the middle of the entrance hall just inside the door. Well, that was a good start. He had made his statement loud and clear. This was HIS house.

....Mick had been cutting down on smoking and was proud of himself for it. I sat down on the grass, and Mick sat on the steps of the caravan.  ‘Ian’s leaving me,’ I told him as I started to cry.  Mick’s hands had tremors as he reached for his cigarettes, stuck one in his face and drew deeply on it.  ‘He says he wants half of everything.’ I went on, crying some more. Mick looked like a stunned fish.
‘That’s not the worst of it,’ I went on. ‘In a few weeks from now I’m meant to be on a married couples panel in the USA to talk about being married.’  I looked up, tears flooding my eyes, and we both burst out laughing. It was just too ludicrous.
‘Want a trip to America?’ I asked him with resignation. ‘Someone’s got to come with me.’

....Monty came and purred around my feet. It didn’t matter a damn to him. I picked him up and tried out the word, announcing ‘lesbian’ to see if he flinched. Then I called him a lesbian. Then I told him I was a lesbian. Then we agreed we didn’t like the word lesbian but we were OK with the word gay. I had had two very close gay male friends, so being part of their club sat fine. I decided that I was most likely feeling like I was a gay man in a woman’s body.

excerpts from Everyday Heaven

WHY I WROTE THE BOOK

I wrote Everyday Heaven as part of coming to terms with the simultaneous discovery of sexuality, journeys in orientation and at the same time coping with loss in a two year span in which I lost three of the closest people in my life.

Blurb

Everyday Heaven is the fourth book in the autobiographical series and like each book can be read as a stand alone book.  Perhaps the funniest of all of her autiebiographies, Everyday Heaven is a not to be missed, humorous, riveting, roller-coaster of an autistic adventure through gender identity, sexuality, divorce, death, spirituality, loss, grief, true love, remarriage and migration.

What readers said: