Cordelia ran a little shop in Totnes, that thriving centre of what used to be called the New Age, right at the top of Fore Street. The shop was a place of wonder for me, draped with silk scarves and coloured shawls, crystals dangling on strings in the windows, sculptures of dragons and unicorns. The wooden counter was divided into compartments filled with beads. Cordelia would thread them on to silver pins to make earrings, or string them into necklaces and hang them on black velvet on the wall. She would let me do it too, playing with glass beads from India that glowed rich colours when I held them to the light; some as large as conkers, others as small as seeds, some silver and gold or painted and carved. I would play with this treasure for hours, watching the shop whilst Cordelia gave consultations in a little room behind a curtain at the back, for people who wanted their astrological charts interpreted, or their tarot cards read.

The opening hours of the shop were hit and miss. If she had no consultations booked and the weather was good, Cordelia would hang the CLOSED sign on the door and we’d hop on a bus that would take us over the South Hams or to the Otter Valley, or up on to Dartmoor, where we’d get out and walk miles, squelching our way in our sturdy walking boots across boggy ground, clambering rocky tors or splashing through frolicking streams, striding over the hills with a packed lunch in a backpack. It was Cordelia who gave me my love of the moor, of wild places.

In the evenings, if we’d been shut in the shop all day, she’d build a fire in a small brazier in her tiny back garden and we’d sit there in the dark and eat our supper and she would point out stars and tell me stories of all the places she’d visited, and of all the places she intended to go. She took me along with her to yoga classes, circle dancing, t’ai chi, vibrational healing and anything else that she happened to be going to. I was too young to understand what the hell was going on, but I had fun and I met some fascinating people.

I stayed with Cordelia every holiday until I left school for university. And the sad thing was, looking back on it, that by the time I was old enough to really understand all the things that she had to teach, I was no longer interested. My education had made me too sensible, too rational, to be taken in by her New Age philosophies. I felt I’d outgrown her, that I was more sophisticated. She was just an old hippy. I had begun, tragically, to mock her.