My name's Julie Warmington. I'm 46 years old this weekend and so just about coming up to my 46th birthday and I've lived pretty much my whole life in Essex. My life has been a pretty charmed life to be honest and I've been very lucky. I have lived for the first portion of my life in Shenfield with my mum and dad in a lovely house called White Post, had a big garden and I think really all I craved as a youngster was to ride horses much to my parents’ disapproval because I think they thought that sounded quite expensive and also I think they thought that sounded dangerous as well. But eventually they gave in and bought me lessons and things. So yes, I learned to horse ride with friends at the age of about 7 and yeah never really looked back from that point really. 

At the age of 18, when it was finally deemed that I could afford one myself and be able to look after it myself, I bought one with my first bonus money. So I went out to work in London and bought a horse, as everyone does! He was a white, pure white, I mean people don't talk about white in horse world but I always say white cause he was iridescent, yeah, pure white Arab stallion. And he was very beautiful and I think a lot of people thought I was probably mad going down that route because they're quite feisty. But he was adorable and looked after me very well.

He was called Ells and unfortunately he died, probably only a couple of years ago now, but he had been with me at that point, probably 25 years or something, or maybe even more, I've lost track, but in my life a long, long time. In fact, longer than my mum, because she passed away from cancer in, well she was 57, I can't remember exactly what the year that was but yeah, 30 years ago. 

But not to dwell on all the bad stuff because yeah, I mean, in terms of other bits of my life, I have  travelled to so many places. Even with friends, I started making a thing of big birthdays. And so for my 30th we went to Thailand, for my 40th we went to Fiji. We also ended up tagging onto our wedding the Fiji trip, which was secretly planned I think by my husband. So I've been very lucky, well travelled, done lots of fun things.
I'm an only child. My mum was an only child and my dad has got one brother, so I've got some cousins on on his side, but we are quite small, but my biggest side of the family comes in with my husband's family, who are a big Derbyshire family. So they are very, you know, we've got cousins and aunts and uncles and everybody all over the place and they are magnificent because they are a real big support both to him and to me as well and yeah kind of wished for a better set of family. I think a lot of people moan, don't they, about all their family they've inherited. But yeah, that won't be me. I'm very lucky to have them.

So we went to Fiji for holiday and then we just had the wedding off the back of that. The wedding was a small affair in a pretty little kind of cliff top location in Fiji, in a place called Savi Sahu. And yeah it was lovely. My husband convinced me that he wanted a big celebration when we came home for the family. And at the time, because I come from such a small family, I was, oh, I don't know, I was kind of thinking ohh sounds like a lot of work. But actually I'm really glad we did it now because it was just before COVID and it was really nice to have that big party big celebration in our new home, well, the home that we've now done up, and have everybody there to share it with us, which was really nice.