I channel angel guidance for myself any time that I am not happy with a situation in my life, and for other people when they are not happy with a situation in their lives. It may be a small thing that I ask for help with….. for example it may be just that I feel pissed off with someone, or worried about money, or frustrated with the lousy weather!
Or it may be that someone I am close to is having a hard time and I want to know how I can help them, or even how I can stop myself interfering and trying to get them to do what I think they should do!
I also channel assistance when I am sick, and when other people are sick. So really, I haven’t come across a situation that I wouldn’t ask for help with. I have written a book about these conversations called ‘Angel In Disguise’
If you would like to sample the book, you can read the first chapter for free here.
I hope that it inspires you and brings you peace of mind.
Chapter One: MEETING THE ANGELS.
One day, one particular day, I was feeling miserable. Very, very miserable. Alone and broke, fat and nearly forty, (well thirty six, actually, but close enough to the big Four O to be miserable about it), I hadn’t been able to summon up the enthusiasm to get out of bed that day, except to go to the loo. This wasn’t unusual, much of my life had been spent in bed, but it was worrying, nonetheless. I had whiled away the hours by alternating between dozing and daydreaming about a better life and occasionally with bouts of sobbing. There were books to read, of course. But I had forbidden myself to lie in bed reading, when there were more important things that needed doing. 
Boxes were piled up in every available corner of the tiny room and needed to be unpacked. The floor had never been hoovered, the bed was smelly, the sink was full of dirty dishes. And there was the small matter of trying to earn a living. So, being unable to muster the enthusiasm for any of the necessities, I was not about to indulge in luxuries.
I listened to the sounds of people returning from work, people who lived in the other apartments, people I knew only to say hello to, if they were accidentally encountered in the hall. And as I comforted myself with the thought that for normal people, the working day was now over and therefore thoughts to do with work could be postponed a little longer, I tried very hard to think of a single reason to ever get up again.
Outside, it was raining. A dreary, dank, depressing, drizzle. Inside, it was chilly and smelled of mouldy carpet. The apartment consisted of one room, big enough for a double bed and a pile of boxes. The shower and toilet were big enough to climb into, but not if you were big. I had covered the one window with an orange sari from India, to remind me of sunshine. But the sari only reminded me that this wasn’t India, this was Dublin on a wet winter day, and I was destined to be stuck here forever, as far as I could see.
The one-roomed apartment was on the ground floor, at the front of a crumbling terraced house and it had a view over the collection of dustbins and the passing traffic, which meant that the curtain stayed closed. This made it dark, even in the daytime with all the lights on. There was one lightbulb, suspended above the bed, which had been optimistically draped with chiffon scarves, in an attempt to copy a style idea from Vogue, but the dim light only added to the general gloom. Because the room was compact, I could reach almost everything from the bed, although I had to stand on it to reach over the kitchen/dining area if I needed to get at the fridge. At this point in time, there was nothing in the fridge, so that was hypothetical. Beside the bed was a pile of papers, bills that hadn’t been opened, books that hadn’t been read, notebooks full of ideas and most importantly, the diaries.
The diaries, I had begun ten years previously, during what I had thought of as a period of optimism in sunny Los Angeles, but which may well have been sheer mania. They were supposed to be a detailed record of my Spiritual Odyssey, my Journey to Enlightenment and were originally intended to take six months to write. Once completed, it had been planned, they would become a best-seller, like ‘Conversations With God’ or ‘The Celestine Prophecy’, spawning all kinds of offers to tour the world giving enlightening speeches and seminars. Appearances on Oprah Winfrey, and David Letterman would have followed, and a movie deal, more books, a chat show, mega-celebrity, fabulous wealth and a perfect, wonderful, fabtastic life.
I might have been asked to pose for Vogue, and I would certainly have had homes in Malibu, New York, and London. There would have been truckloads of clothes. I could just have everything I saw in the magazines sent over immediately. People would offer me stuff all the time. Chanel, Balenciaga, Dior, whatever. I would have a supermodel body, and a stunningly handsome and devoted husband (somewhere in the countryside, out of the limelight, taking care of the kids). Of course I would have taken time out of my busy schedule to save the planet, drop the debt, reclaim the rainforests, house the homeless and party with Liz Hurley and Elton John.
Later on, approaching forty, I would have looked a miraculous twenty five, and would have talked about my yoga regime (available on video and DVD) and healthy eating plan (buy the recipe books from all good bookstores or from the website) and my amazingly youthful complexion, in ‘Hello’ magazine, from the safety of one of my gorgeous homes……the possibilities were infinitely delightful to contemplate. And had provided hours, days, perhaps even years of amusement. The autobiography, in various versions had done the rounds of the major agents and publishers and been rejected by all of them.
A year or so previously, I had emerged from The Priory (more of that later) to find that apart from being able to successfully sell my story for more money than I had been expecting, (but less than I had been hoping for), the television series didn’t materialise and neither did the book deal or the Vogue shoot. Things went back to normal with a nasty lurch.
Shane (my long term boyfriend) had been sent home early from The Priory, (where he was detoxing) for having brandies smuggled in, in Mac Donalds chocolate milkshakes. I had followed him home after a few days, when it was deemed that I was ready to be released into the community.
We lived in what had once been a nice flat, in a slightly downmarket area of North London, near enough to Hampstead Heath for me to give that as my address, but near enough, also to Kentish Town for Shane, (who was not comfortable with the notion of living in Hampstead) to give that as his. Back at home, the bin-bags full of rubbish had begun to overflow onto the floor of the kitchen/living area. The collection of empty gin bottles, which surrounded the sofa had spread to the armchairs and had closed off the passageway between them so that one had to step over a sea of bottles, to get to the fridge. Ashtrays had long since been abandoned and cigarette butts proliferated from every available receptacle. Newspapers, magazines, books, CDs, videos and unopened bills took up a fair portion of the floor, as did pizza boxes and ice cream cartons and spoons. A strange brown sticky looking substance with meaty bits sticking out of it had been splattered all over the wall near the cooker and on the ceiling above it. A tin of fish, it transpired, had exploded while being boiled by our lodger, who very seldom came out of his room, except occasionally to eat something. I have no idea what actually went on in that room, but the smell permeated even my wardrobe, so that I was forever getting stuff dry cleaned.
When I arrived home the heating had stopped working, the flat was freezing and the bathroom had clearly been used for purposes other than what it was intended for. The washing machine from upstairs had come through the ceiling on top of the television, but the television still worked. The feng shui inspired altar that I had made in our relationship corner had, however, been decimated.
In more philosophical moments, I appreciated the funny side of living like this and amused myself by watching films like ‘Trainspotting’ and sneering at the bourgeois comfort that the characters enjoyed. Ideas for sitcoms, based on a tawdry rock and roll nightmare- ‘The Osbournes’ set in a Kentish Town Council flat, – these possibilities came thick and fast. An idea for an installation at the Tate Modern featuring the green nylon sofa, covered in cigarette burns and surrounded by empty wine bottles, with Shane positioned on the sofa watching telly, would, I reckoned have wiped the floor with Tracey Emin’s bed. My life was incredibly cool, artistically speaking. Quentin Tarantino meets the Naked Lunch. And in moments of levity, I was grateful for it. So much better than being bourgeois. But returning to it cold, shivery and vulnerable, after the warmth and safety of The Priory was untenable. Shane barely glanced up from his scribbling, when I told him how I was feeling, so I called the hospital immediately, begging to be allowed to come back. The nice man explained that I would be very welcome to come back, if I was willing to pay the fees.
The fees. Three thousand pounds a week. We hadn’t been able to afford the fees; there simply wasn’t any money in the bank. I had somehow assumed that if I ever got Shane into rehab, money would be no object. Indeed Johnny Depp himself had volunteered on several occasions to pay for it and to send a limo, if necessary. But I hadn’t been able to get Johnny on the phone, when we finally made it in there. After a bit of a panic, a kind friend had loaned us the money. But the kind friend could not be asked to cough up any more, so it seemed I would simply have to make the best of it.
Victoria Mary Clarke - Journalism 