Friday, 9 May 2025
I grew up surrounded by fields, flowerbeds, haystacks and the faint wafts of toner from an old photocopier.
My childhood wasn’t perfect, no one’s is, but it was rich in stories and the quiet grounding that only becomes clearer much later.
Weekends and holidays were often spent at my dad’s office – Howard and Seddon Architects – a family business passed down by my grandfather.
There were no laptops then. Just typewriters, coffee rings on tracing paper, and love letters typed on carbon copy slips with words: “Dear ‘baddy’, I saved you my last ‘weetie’.”
We didn’t need to know who ‘baddy’ was. We just knew he was loved.
My sister and I would race to the old secretary’s desk. The one with the saloon-style swing door, until someone cried or someone was bribed.
And in between the sounds of telephones and the clack of keys, the scent of warm paper from CAD drawings filled the air.
At home, the three of us had our own little flower bed carved out of the sweeping lawn of a big Cheshire house.
Not posh, just wonderfully rambling. We had a pony, a few goats and sheep, a Golden Retriever, a Persian cat, and a small army of bunnies, guinea pigs and hamsters.
Oh, and my brother’s snake, which I still haven’t forgiven him for. Especially not the time it escaped, or when he thought it would be hilarious to leave its shed skin under my duvet.
But despite all that, I always missed him when he went off to boarding school.
It wasn’t just a home, it was a training ground. My entrepreneurial spirit showed up early. I’d sell damsons, gooseberries, raspberries and rhubarb we’d grown to walkers down our lane, offer juice in summer and convert old bunny hutches into makeshift shops.
When the weather was too bad, I set up shop on the step of my bedroom door to unsuspecting family members. Some paid up. Some stepped over me.
That spirit runs in the family. The Seddons have always been doers – Said and Done.
Even then, I knew I wanted something different. I wasn’t sure what or how. But I knew.
Little chances, fleeting moments and good people helped the direction I’ve taken. And somehow, here I am, using words to help others say and do what matters.
Maybe that early instinct to plant, nurture, and share was never just about fruit or pocket money.
I guess I’ve always been drawn to the quiet magic of helping things grow.
My dad and grandpa both loved gardening. I do now, too. Maybe there’s something in the soil, or maybe it’s just the feeling of things growing under your care that grounds you.
My mum gave her whole self to us. Quietly, steadily, wisely.
When I felt like I wasn’t enough, especially in my teenage years, when I didn’t feel clever or quick, she sat beside me, telling me the story of the hare and the tortoise as my tears dropped onto my pillow.
I carry that with me now, as my eldest daughter sits her GCSEs. She’s horse mad just like my sister was.
Watching my daughters grow, I see little echoes of the past blooming in new ways. My youngest loves to bake just like my mum and her mum before her, whom we affectionately called GG (great grandma).
The kitchen becomes a place of warmth and welcome, of spoon-licking and storytelling, just like it was for us.
The women in my family are quiet forces.
My aunt left England at 18 for a temp job in Hong Kong and never came back. Now she runs a global planning consultancy, Townland.
We’ve all taken our own paths.
My sister, who once spent hours with her pony, stayed closer to home, albeit further south than Yorkshire.
My brother left for China years ago and now lives in Thailand, building a life far from the fields we grew up in.
The wheel turns in different ways for all of us.
As for me, life brought its own hurdles. It wasn’t all rose gardens. I had to work hard, carve my own path, and learn to hold myself when things got tough.
That lesson from mum, that we are responsible for own lives, and that you only get out of it what you put into it, took time to stick. But it did.
I don’t write this to sound grand or polished or ‘silver spooned.’ That’s not how it felt. It’s more that I’ve come to understand where I came from, and how it made me who I am.
And I wanted to write it down.
For my family. For my daughters. For anyone who ever felt like the tortoise.