Ginnie Bedggood arrived into this world as the air raid siren sounded an alarm. This was June 1943 in London UK and World War II was in progress. Some would say that the sound effects for this entry were an entirely suitable forecast of what was to come.

She attended a Roman Catholic convent grammar school (yes what you hear about convent girls is true) and graduated from London University (Queen Mary College) with a degree in History. During her University years she became interested in social work and got involved in a Boys' Club in the East End of London, teaching drama to 'deprived' children. Her failure to graduate on her first attempt led to a year working in a Girls' Remand Home in Sussex and a period of four months living in Ohio, US, while she awaited the results of her second attempt. This was her first experience as an expat. and one where she encountered racism for the first time up front and personal through her relationship with an African American. She also experienced working as a go-go dancer in a singles bar and a waitress in a drive-in. Without air raid sirens.

The second attempt to graduate having proved successful she returned to UK and undertook a postgraduate Diploma in Social Administration at LSE at the same time as another now old age pensioner was a student on the Government course (Mick Jagger). This was the precursor to her professional training as a probation officer at the University of Southampton whence she emerged with her professional qualification in 1966. At the age of 23 she was appointed one of London's youngest probation officers, attached to Marlborough St. Magistrates Court and covering the areas of Carnaby Street and Soho. Her work was mainly with prostitutes from whom she says she probably learned more than she taught! Although she has rarely shared exactly what those lessons involved. She also specialised in the transient and young drug addict population of Earls Court.

During her long vacations from this post she had her second experience of being an expat driving across the Sahara desert and in West Africa in places such as Timbuktu. After three years she moved to the NSPCC as a social work tutor. Here she taught and supervised students working with cases of physical and sexual abuse of children. In 1973 she met her future husband, Ginger Bedggood, an airline pilot, whilst she was learning to get her Private Pilots Licence at Denham airfield in Bucks. By now she was commuting daily from Bucks to London and so in 1975 she began working as a social work teacher at High Wycombe College of Art and Technology in Buckinghamshire. She remained with this College for 17 years. During that time she taught countless students to be social workers and probation officers as well as herself completing an MA in Public and Social Administration at Brunel University.

She divorced her husband in 1982 and after wild oats sewing for eight years met her current partner Grahame Bush in 1990. That same year she traveled across Russia, Mongolia and China on the Trans-Siberian Railway and saw life from the inside of a Mongolian yurt.

In 1992 Grahame and Ginnie moved to the Dominican Republic. And then the fun really started!