Oops! I forgot to introduce myself…

Hi. I’m Jacqui. Nice to meet you. Welcome to my world.

I was musing about topics for posts the other morning and realized something... I’ve introduced you to Kim, my husband, and to Evie, my mad little dog, but I’ve royally failed to introduce the obvious person i.e. me. Oops! Apologies. Let me rectify that.

Where did it all start?

I was born in Hillingdon Hospital (UK) in 1967. To save you working it out in your head I just turned 58 years old. A touch freaky to think about the fact that I have just one birthday left in my fifties. This past decade feels like it has flown by.

Mum and Dad, in their wisdom, named me Jacqueline after a very short stint as a possible Laura. Mum had a good friend from France, so my shorter version of ‘Jacqui’ is spelt in what Mum has always said is the French way. I thank my lucky stars that Mum managed to veto Dads preferred (Welsh) name of Myfanwy pronounced “miVANwee” or “miVANoy”.

I managed to mostly avoid using Jacqueline, except for when Mum got mad with me as a kid. But that all changed when I moved to Denmark. Here all the government departments, doctors, dentists, banks, and the like, insist on using my full legal name. Oh joy – not. Especially when my name is rare here and quite a few Danes have no idea how to pronounce it. I see them stumble when they need to call a name and know immediately it’s going to be mine.

When I divorced my first husband I had to change my last name back to my original Gatehouse. And I seriously considered legally changing my Jacqueline to Jacqui at the same time. In the end I decided against it - I don’t think I’d ever have heard the end of it from Mum. (Right Mum?)

Image caption: five years old on my first day at school. Buried under that ‘she’ll grow into it’ school uniform blazer is a skirt – I promise! I was never one for something that came to my knees. But now everything has to come to my knees!!

I got my first job when I was fifteen as a Saturday kid in Boots the Chemist (as they were known then) and I guess I’ve been selling things, one way or another, ever since. I had no idea that starting out in a shop with a pharmacy was going to be so prophetic in terms of my future career in drug development and the testing of potential new medicines.

I did OK’ish at school – I wasn’t top of the class, but generally I wasn’t at the bottom either. However, when I failed my chemistry A-level I did what everyone tells you not to do. I accepted a last-minute option to: (1) study a subject I’d never considered (Business Studies); (2) at a polytechnic (yes I am that old to remember when they weren’t all universities in the UK) I’d never considered; (3) in a town I’d never visited except for an odd family day out (Brighton). I couldn’t have got it more wrong and stuck it out for only nine weeks before I headed home to Mum and Dad.

Image caption: Dads favorite sport was skiing and we loved being out on the snow together. Can you see why nobody could work out if I was a girl or a boy half the time when I was a kid? I got called ‘sonny’ regularly by strangers. The short hair, hidden by my hood, didn’t help.

When I got back I went to work. As a Saturday kid I’d moved on from Boots to work for C&A – a chain of clothing department stores that no longer exists in the UK. So I went back to C&A, but now full-time. I actually liked working and enjoyed being part of a team. And of course I was back to selling stuff – I loved putting out the new stock and watching it fly out of the door when you presented it just right.

C&A was a great business education for me and I learned so much. Not only did I work in one of the shops, with a diverse selection of people both young and old, but I also moved to their HQ in central London and worked in Marketing for a couple of years.

After that I was able to join their graduate management training program. And yes, you’re right. I didn’t have a degree at that point, but they accepted my work experience instead plus I had wonderful references from my managers.

I always had an inkling that I would go to university at some point. It was like an itch that just wouldn’t go away. I’m incredibly competitive by nature – even though I claimed I wasn’t for many years – and I felt like I’d lost out by not going and showing that I was capable of getting a degree.

As luck would have it someone mentioned a university just down the road from where I was living. They had a Human Physiology program – a light went on when I saw the course description - I knew that was for me.

I started university at what I thought was the ripe old age of 24 – I was formally classified as a mature student. That seems so ridiculous when I look back now. I was still just a kid. But I was so worried that I was ‘behind’ all my peers.

Only a couple of months into my degree course – on November 21^st 1991 - I landed in hospital as I was knocked off my bike by a car that turned across the road in front of me. I sailed over the front of said car and landed in a heap on the other side. Cue some lovely passersby who picked me up and called an ambulance.

Apparently as I sailed through the air I’d tried to soften my landing by putting my right arm out, which only resulted in a badly dislocated collar bone. Maybe that saved me from something much worse when my head still hit the road. Four years and three surgeries later my collar bone was finally back where it should be. But it would be over a decade before I got on a bike again.

This time I was top of my class and walked away, not only with a First-Class Honours Degree in Human Physiology, but also the Dean of Faculty prize. “Swot” I hear you mumble. Actually that bike accident in my first year, combined with my work experience, was the making of me academically. I cracked the code. When you have no use of your right arm and can’t write for three months you suddenly have to get very organized and well prepared to make sure you can still fulfil all the assignments and exams. That approach stuck and helped me through the entire course.

I had grown to love learning so much that I didn’t want to stop. I hated the thought that my time at university was over. So I found a way to keep studying – this time for a PhD in Radiological Sciences at Kings College London – sounds fancy right?! Well when I started the school was called ‘UMDS’ – very unfancy! UMDS was the United Medical and Dental Schools – part of Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital in London. It was just luck that during the time I was studying UMDS was merged into King’s College. The certificate was definitely prettier as a result! And King’s College is much more swanky on the old resume.

Radiological Sciences just means imaging – in my case taking pictures of the spines of little old ladies with osteoporosis (brittle bones) to look for fractures in their vertebrae, the small bones that make up the spine. The lower your bone density, combined with a higher number of fractures in those small bones, then the higher the risk you’ll break something significant like your hip. And then the consequences can, and frequently do, shorten your life.

While studying for my PhD got involved in clinical research – the studies that are done to test potential new medicines in patients. The unit where I worked collaborated with a number of different drug companies to help test new treatments for osteoporosis in patients.

After graduating I stayed in jobs related to the development of those medicines. I’ve worked for a variety of companies over the years and in a selection of different roles. But I’ve spent most time in sales and account management in one form or another. I won’t go into details here, but if you’re interested (and are one of the few subscribers who haven’t worked with me previously) then feel free to look me up on good old LinkedIn.

I moved to Denmark, with a company I was already working for, in 2003. I can’t believe that I will have been here for 22 years this July. I made the decision and was here, installed in a rented apartment north of central Copenhagen, just three weeks later. My job was the main driver for the move, but on a personal level it’s still the single best decision I’ve ever made.

Image caption: I’m generally not enthusiastic about pictures of myself, but this one I adore of Kim and I in the church on our wedding day in March 2008. I didn’t adore the church bit so much, but I definitely adore that man sitting beside me.

Kim and I got married in his home town back in 2008 – you can find out more about my ‘grizzly bear’ in my earlier post Who holds your hand?.

These days we live in the Copenhagen suburbs in a single level house (aka a bungalow to the Brits among you) that we designed and built almost five years ago. I know that sounds very ‘Grand Designs’, but it’s really not.

It’s entirely normal in Denmark to have an individual house built. We have far fewer of those cookie cutter housing estates built by big developers when compared to countries such as the UK. On our street, as on many others, every house is different – some built as far back as the 1960’s and others as recently as in the past year.

I love Denmark. It’s a wonderful country in so many ways. You might be missing a few hills as it’s so flat and you may be challenged in mid-winter when we’re down to a handful of daylight hours, but the pain is worth it. And of course, how could I not love the brilliant public health system here that saved my life.

My Danish is still dreadful even after all these years. It took me a long time to even be able to discern the sounds of the three additional vowels that there are in the alphabet. I understand a lot of Danish, but speaking it is another matter. When I concoct something to say in my head my pronunciation is perfect, but when it comes out of my mouth somehow it all goes wrong in the brain to mouth translation and sounds horrific!

As you’ve probably gathered if you’ve read some of my previous posts – I became critically ill in December 2022 with necrotizing fasciitis aka flesh-eating bacteria. If you don’t know what that is, or how to spot it, then please read last week’s post NECK-re-tie-zing FASH-e-i-tis... Say what?!

Before I got sick I’d reached the dizzying heights of being a Senior Vice President running a global sales team, with billion-dollar annual targets, supporting part of a 40,000 people company. The title sounds much better than the actual role – the less said about that the better.

These days I’m just ‘Jacqui’ – what you see is what you get - I have no need for any other title.

Image caption: … and me today. Well, July 2023 as it happens. Short grey hair courtesy of sepsis after effects. I’d had to have my long locks cut off – or what was left of them – as a result of the massive sepsis-related hair loss that I experienced a few months after I came out of hospital. Wrinkles included free of charge. Love those pink reading glasses.

After I got sick I followed a new path. I resigned from my job. And I started my own little company. These days I work part-time as a trainer and coach. Mostly teaching topics related to communication skills, building successful relationships between companies, sales skills etc.

When I’m not working – which I’ll admit is a fair bit - I swim (a lot), I cycle (a lot), and I walk the dog (a lot). And to be fair I walk even without the dog. I walk and I listen to a good book or a good podcast. I love to read something that moves me, something that connects, something that makes me think, something that takes me to another world.

And it’s no surprise that I’m still selling stuff – Vinted (the second-hand site) is my playground.

Oh and yes, then there’s this writing thing that I’m doing most days …

But that’s all the history and the day to day. What about me? Who am I as a person? What am I like?

What things do I love? Let’s leave out the obvious like Kim, Evie, Mum, friends, etc. and of course writing, which is my little oasis of heavenly joy each day. If you haven’t met my little dog Evie yet then go read Dear Evie… A Doggy Love Letter. But back to the topic – things I love:

(1) A clear blue sky – I swear that we have the best, most beautiful blue here in Denmark where we’re surrounded by water.

(2) Taking photos – as you may have gathered I take a lot of photos that not only get used here on Substack but also adorn many of the walls of our house with huge canvas-style prints.

(3) And I will admit to a love of trashy TV – put on Selling Sunset on Netflix and I’m happy as a clam.

Image caption: my current favorite of my own photos. Taken in the rain in a little park in the center of Copenhagen. All my pictures are just taken with my phone – no posh, fancy camera involved. I have a little dream of creating my own card and print company to share these with the world.

What do I hate? I’ll stay away from religion and politics. And I have a hard time saying that any of these generate any passion in me to exude true hate. So let’s say these are things I really dislike and have no respect for …

(1) People with hidden (self-serving) agendas. I definitely carry the scars of having worked in a number of toxic work places over the years.

(2) People that think bike lanes are appropriate places to park their car or van. Yep, I am now a true Dane. The bike is king.

(3) Black clothes. Dismal, boring, lifeless, soul-sucking. My wardrobe these days is a riot of color. I think nothing of wearing pink and orange or blue and green and purple together. More on this topic when I start to share my book about when I got sick, and how that changed me, in a couple of weeks.

How do other people describe me?

Everything thus far has been from my own viewpoint. But what am I actually like as a person according to other people?

I asked a few folks who know me well ‘what 3 words’ they’d use to describe me. I certainly caused a bit of brain ache with my little request – I hadn’t realized how hard it is to boil someone down to just three words. I tried to do it for Kim and my head nearly exploded. So thank you to everyone that responded!

When I asked Kim he immediately asked if I wanted those words from before I got sick or after? Both, I said! So here’s what he said – before I got sick - workaholic, strong, stressed. He’s definitely being polite. I was surprised that ‘grumpy’, ‘disconnected’, ‘always travelling’, ‘self-centered’, ‘exhausted’, and ‘witch’ weren’t in there.

Many people, including Kim, say that I’ve become a different person as a result of getting sick. Now he describes me as caring, strong, and calm. I hope he’s not just being polite again!

Kim will describe me in different ways depending on the day and the situation and has been known to question what is actually going on between my ears - if anything! I’m incredibly literal. Jokes fly straight over my head to the extent that Kim has been known to ask if my PhD certificate came from some dodgy website rather than a real university.

A great friend and her wonderful daughter boiled me down to one word. Iconic. That blew my mind. And when it came to three words they came up with authentic, trustworthy, and inspirational. It means so much to me that they see me like that. Love our ‘chosen’ family.

Another lovely friend came up with determined, courageous, and caring. Wow. I feel humbled by those. I hope I live up to them.

Then there’s Mum. She said beautiful, bright, and (my) daughter. Not that she’s a bit biased or anything! When pushed she also said bossy! Then claimed it wasn’t from her. Apparently a health visitor came to see me not long after I was born and that was the word she used to describe me. I might not have been more than a few days old, but I think that woman hit the nail on the head in terms of my personality. I can’t help but lead or take charge.

Finally of course there’s Evie. Now from her perspective I think the three words would have to be safety, food, and biscuits, more biscuits, lots of biscuits! I’m her comfort blanket. If she’s scared or feeling sick she runs to me. But Kim is top dog in our house. I say walkies and the first thing she does is look at Kim to see if I’m telling the truth and of course to make sure he’s coming too!

So that’s me. Did I miss anything? Anything else you want to know?

If you enjoyed this post please do click on the heart, add a comment, and/or share it on as that will help more people find Hold My Hand and my writing.

COMING ON 1^st MAY – my ‘book in parts’. In weekly posts I’ll be sharing my book Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life chapter by chapter. I’m so excited to finally share my story with a wider audience and to have the opportunity to get your thoughts and feedback.