And finally…

Sue Darling

Position

Retired in Spain

Position while at Mills & Reeve

Group Coordinator: September 2001 – October 2005

CRM Administrator: October 2005 –December 2020

Dates employed by Mills & Reeve

From September 2001 – December 2020

I started working at Mills & Reeve in 2001 and was based in the Cambridge office in the corporate team as a group coordinator. I was in that role for four years until I started working with Helen Packwood on InterAction in 2005, then I became the InterAction CRM Administrator and moved to the Marketing Team.

In my role I would monitor InterAction tickets, respond to InterAction queries, and run training sessions. I would also often help the finance team with bill dispatching every month and other billing and finance queries that came through.

Working from home was only just being introduced firm wide when I was leaving for my retirement. I was pleased to continue working remotely 15 years from Spain but I did really miss my girls in Cambridge. Looking back, I loved that job and the busyness of it. Something I don’t miss is some of the many recurring InterAction queries.

One of my favourite and funniest Mills & Reeve memories happened on a Friday morning. We used to take it in turns buying breakfast and on this particular day Brian Marshall managed to get runny egg down his shirt sleeve right before his meeting. I remember having to frantically wash and dry his shirt sleeve in the ladies bathroom so that he didn’t turn up with a stain.

Since retiring, we (my partner Gordon and I) decided to renovate our newly bought house to the north of Malaga. Meanwhile, we had to rent a house for 18 months while our new property was in the middle of buildings work. We decided to move to be nearer to amenities in walking distance after living in the countryside for 17 years.

We can now walk to the local shops and meet friends and neighbours for a coffee with ease. The village has a square with bars and restaurants and is a very sociable village because of that. One thing I don’t miss from the old house is harvesting all the almonds, but I do miss the views and peace and quiet.

The original upstairs hadn’t been remodelled in 100 years and so needed a touch-up! The house now has 3 bedrooms and 3 ½ bathrooms. The lounge and kitchen were extended so we could have an open plan. Upstairs now had 2 ensuite bedrooms and we treated ourselves to a walk-in wardrobe. There are still some things left to do in the house including the banisters, the downstairs bedroom and ensuite, utility room and cloakroom and outside the garden walls need to be rendered. The outbuilding will eventually be rebuilt to become my studio where I will be able to get back to my hobby of making mosaics again.

We’ve adopted a stray cat (or should I say she adopted us) and called her Pickles. She’s no older than 18 months. Along with Pickles, we somehow also adopted a chicken that we found in our garden, although we had no idea where it came from. Four of us had to run around for an hour to catch it and put it in a box and then we managed to re-home it, but what a commotion that hour was!

When we’ve finished the house we plan to have a housewarming party to thank the neighbours for their patience with all the noise and the mess. Then here’s hoping for plenty of short breaks and holidays and, of course, spending time in our lovely house we have been working on.