Introduce Yourself : My Childhood Dream by Ilynn Atkinson

As a teenage Beauty Queen I wanted to be an actress but my parents would not hear of such a future occupation for me. Now I have retired I am free to follow my own desres and am looking for opportunities in cine and publicity. I have lead a wonderful and very varied life. I travelled the world at the age of 21 working in the bureau of long-distance ocean liners as well as cruise ships. This was followed by settling in Central London, qualifying as FSVA, and becoming a partner in a firm of West End Estate Agents and Property Developers. At the same time I opened a restaurant, popular with the Beatles in the 1960s, and an Antiques Market in Marylebone. In the 1970s, by chance I met a clairvoyant at a luncheon. She insisted that I must go to the Spiritualist Association in Belgrave Square (close to my home) and ask for Ivy Northage. At that meeting I was told I was a natural medium and needed training in closing down this energy and opening it up when required. I attended classes with her and Freda Fell and practiced platform performances for various charities, accepted a BBC-TV challenge on their terms and conditions as well as a series of Friday night radio call-in programmes. All this created a lot of publicity. I now realize I was trying to prove the whole thing was rubbish, but I failed at that because all the tests proved positive. In the 1980s I funded the setting up of a roof tile factory in Venezuela. The bottom line looked good and I thought it would be fun. What a disaster! That cost me my London properties I had managed to buy earlier. Having settled residence in Venezuela I accepted work as the Central Area Correspondent for the national English language newspaper. I had my own page reporting on political, industrial and social news, as well as writing specialist articles for the Sunday Magazine. Now I am retired and was offered a small part in the comedy, Solo Para Dos, filmed in Margarita and directed by Roberto Santiago. This re-kindled my dream of wanting to act so am now seeking other roles in cine or publicity. Fortunately, my natural looks and anima have never caught up with my chronological age. I'm lucky that way !