She must have appeared downright angelic when she was young, with her sweet face, its dainty, regular features surrounded by blond, curly hair. She still has that cherubic aspect about her, at age 50. Her hair is still almost shoulder-length, framing her face with its instant friendly smile. Belying that smile lately, however, are the deeply-etched furrows on her brow, just under her fringe of blonde hair.

She greets us warmly, and we are always glad to see her. As we do in odd places; walking her large rescue dog in the ravine - but not of late, her leisure hours have been truncated by need - and in the seasonal department of large box stores where she works for short periods of time as a clerk.

More latterly, at the produce department of the newly-opened supermarket we have been shopping at. There, she stops briefly to chat animatedly with us. Earlier, she had informed me that she had started off on a kind of employment new to her, which doesn't pay much, but is deeply satisfying for her. It's working with seniors in their own homes, to help them get along on a daily basis, to keep them independent and out of hospitals and nursing-care homes.

The last time we met, a few days ago, she mused, without bitterness or irony, how, in retrospect, her life hadn't prepared her for where she now is. Reinventing herself, as it were, trying at her age, to find financial security when she knows that people who had taken civil service jobs had a secure retirement fund behind them and were already musing about retirement. While she had to concentrate on the dire focus of keeping herself together financially.

She had been working fifty-hour weeks: 30 hours on her growing elder-care business, and 20 with the supermarket, and she was exhausted. It showed, her face looked grey and more lined than usual.

Not complaining, not really. But trying to understand how she got where she is now mired.