Judith Watkins’ mission in life is to spread light, love and laughter to the world.
Because of this, her husband credits her with single-handedly causing global warming and follows her round the house switching everything off. She now uses candles and is on first name terms with the local Fire Service.
As for love, she tries her best. She is the wife of a long-suffering Welshman and mother of three children. Two of them have made it through to adulthood and successfully escaped but one still lives at home in his Teen Cave.
When it comes to laughter, that is Judith’s default-setting. Her view is, that if life gives you lemons, and your lemonade turns out to be flat, acidic and potentially poisonous, then what else can you do?
Judith is a linguist. She speaks French, Russian, German, Spanish and Italian – none of them very well but just enough to get herself into interesting situations. As an undergraduate she spent half a year in Dijon, where she learnt a lot about mustard and Beaujolais nouveau. She also spent five months studying at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Here, she ate a lot of caviar, drank far too much vodka and got herself into several tight situations.
After university Judith travelled through India, worked briefly as an interpreter and then did a 3-year stint as a tour-guide in Europe, where she had many adventures, most of which can never be spoken of. Then love found her one New Year’s Eve in a Sheffield pub and followed her round the world on a year’s working honeymoon. No debit or credit cards in those days, no mobile phones to connect them to their friends and family – just youthful optimism, a £50 float and a stint in a condom factory in Sydney, Australia to boost the funds.
Home again to Yorkshire and a long career in teaching English as a foreign language, culminating in a trip up the English UK red carpet to receive a coveted award and publication in Research Notes. Not content with only reaching an academic audience, Judith decided to unleash her literary talents on the rest of the unsuspecting world.
Judith has done a lot of ‘inner work’ and probably not enough ‘outer work’, as can be judged by her photo. She likes to suspend her disbelief and keep an open mind, which has led her into many strange situations where she has found both humour and wisdom.
In her spare time, Judith enjoys running, Lindy Hop dancing and practising reiki as a qualified reiki/crystal reiki master.
Judith would love to share her experiences with you but fully appreciates you might not be ready for them yet!
To hear an interview with Judith, click here:
