My mum was born as Carol Ann Willmott in Surrey in 1951.
She met my dad in the same county, but at the time of my birth, she was working at West Yorkshire Police Headquarters in Wakefield.
During my lifetime, my Mum had various jobs including being a school dinner lady at both of my schools and also various cleaning jobs. She spent her last years of working before retirement working at St. James’s hospital in Leeds as part of the domestic staff.
My mum has always been great, and helpful. She worked hard to support us as a family and I am very grateful for everything she has done.

My Dad, Christopher Richard Lovell was born in Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire in 1948.
He moved down south when he was just 3 weeks old. For many years he would only visit the north on holidays. He moved back to Yorkshire permanently to become a Police Constable in 1971 when he was 23, bringing my mum with him.
My dad had also lost his mother at a young age. His father re-married and he gained two step-brothers.
My dad remained a police officer until he eventually retired very prematurely in 1990.
My dad remarried in 2003 to a woman called Joy. She died in 2022.
My dad died of lung cancer in September 2009 at the age of just 61 just six weeks after being diagnosed with the illness. He wasn’t always to get on with but I wish he was still alive.

In 1977 I gained a brother, Anthony Richard Lovell.
He was a difficult child with a tendency for bad behaviour, tantrums and other issues. Although we could play and be friends, most often there was a difficult tension with him. He could easily become angry and violent.
We have always been quite different. I would have perhaps liked to have had some of his qualities such as his apparent charisma, and popularity with women but that would be about as far as I’d go as there’s not much else about him I would ever care to emulate.
Around the turn of the millennium, Tony spent time in prison for serious GBH. He’s also been homeless and has slept rough on the streets of Leeds.
As well as long periods of time without a legitimate job, he’s had a lot of different real jobs, such as in manufacturing, door security. The last I heard was that he was administering ambulances in Ukraine during the Russian invasion of 2022., And that he’ll be moving on to Rwanda for something to do with some type of drones.
He seeks fame and attention and is prepared to debase himself with stupid and/or dangerous stunts for a few social media likes. He has appeared in ultra low budget films, a chavvy comedy YouTube channel and also on at least two barrel-scraping dating shows on Channel 4 including the notorious “Naked Attraction”. I was unfortunate enough to accidentally see that one evening when I finished watching something recorded that was worthwhile and the screen defaulted back to the last channel. He wasn’t selected.
Anthony is heavily tattooed and fancies himself as a bit of a gangster. This has often been reflected in the company he has kept.
Tony is one of the most selfish people I know and he has never been able to maintain a relationship that he didn’t systematically wear down and destroy with his anger and personal responsibility issues.
He has routinely run up large debts with people and companies and has previously used my address to which I have received his debt collection letters.
My brother has a son, but he is far from a model father.

Some of the prominent grief that my brother has caused me:

• Stealing and writing off my car whilst drunk driving.
• Breaking into my house.
• Destroying my property.
• Stealing my property.
• Abusing my helpfulness and not paying back around £8000 in loans that I could ill afford to furnish him with. Most of which was to do with helping him avoid house repossession but it happened eventually anyway.
• Played a significant part in destroying my relationship with a girlfriend.

By about 2018 I had cut him out of my life, (not for the first time) and I wouldn’t even want to acknowledge him on the street. If this has been unavoidable it has been a brief angry sweary exchange.

I don’t know that much about any of my grandparents and I was never really that emotionally close to them and didn’t see them that often as I always lived over 200 miles away.

My maternal grandfather was a milkman. Sadly, my natural grandmother died aged 28, before my mum was even 4 years old. She had worked in the The Women’s Land Army in WWII.

My paternal grandfather had been an instrument repairer in the RAF. He later worked as a Linotype setter for the Daily Express on Fleet Street, London.
My dad’s stepmother had been in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the war.
My dad’s natural mother had also been part of the war effort but I don’t know in what capacity.