30 Years Ago I Had Six Months To Live | Lyn Parent

Lyn Parent: 00:00:00

So her body language was fear. And I looked up to her, I said, I've got it, haven't I? And she said, yep, you've got full blown AIDS and you've got six months to live.

My name is Marie-Line Parent, I'm French, I was born in Paris.

David Brown: 00:00:17

Brilliant.

Lyn Parent: 00:00:18

In: 1960

David Brown: 00:00:40

Okay, what kind of art did she do?

Lyn Parent: 00:00:42

She ended up being the top china designer for Waterford Ainslie in Wedgwood China Vilroy Bosch and it goes on. Amazing. She's six or seven designers, she's so well known. Erica Parry. Funny you're very close to that name.

But yeah, I ended up living with a 80 year old grandfather and a grandmother and he was a brigadier, which was a brigadier.

He was aide de camp to the King of England and he was the aide de camp which is a person that's in charge of Queen Elizabeth for her first year of reign and then he obviously retired but he was so well known in his own regiments and the amount of medals I've got is incredible. So wonderful stories about him but I think that was my upbring, you know, is seen and not heard. Look and don't touch. Why would he like a French girl?

Because they were in war against them. So it's incredible. It's his karma really. So.

But I learned so much about time, get to place on time, which I didn't hear but normally 10 minutes early. Yeah, just incredible upbringing. And then I was very lucky.

My mother remarried a beautiful man called Cruise Parry and he was Second World War fighter pilot for the Royal Navy Air Force and he was the last fighter pilot in the Second World War. So amazing books about him. So I was very lucky. We were brought up in the most beautiful place in Wanash, which is in Surrey.

So very, very lucky to be in the most beautiful grounds and lived a great life, you know. Then they had a child. I had my sister, 11 years, I was 11 then. She was. Her name's Roselle. And yeah, life was great.

I went to school, went to Godalming, went to a convent in Midhurst Convent. It's a terrible school but all the people out there, amazing women though, all very famous in their own right.

And yeah, from there we went to oh, Shanley Green where Richard Branson's and all the really well known people up there, we hung around with them. They were my parents best friends. So in this 60s, early 70s it was a very, very.

We, we mixed with a lot of actors, a lot of actresses, famous people who very are well known now. So we had quite a fun life, you know, a lot of really good parties, had a beautiful lake, swimming pool, tennis court, Babington court, River stream.

I mean everything. So I kept saying to my parents, why don't we ever go on holiday? Shouldn't you've got the holiday here. We don't need to go away.

David Brown: 00:03:21

So that was back with your mom again then?

Lyn Parent: 00:03:23

Mother and stepfather.

David Brown: 00:03:24

So how long were you with your grandparents?

Lyn Parent: 00:03:27

About two years, two and a half, three years. Went to school and Reicht and learned English.

David Brown: 00:03:33

So a cold entrance into England.

Lyn Parent: 00:03:37

Yeah, definitely.

David Brown: 00:03:39

I lived with my grandparents as well and my grandfather was a World War II veteran.

Lyn Parent: 00:03:43

Was they?

David Brown: 00:03:44

He was a flight instructor in the war.

Lyn Parent: 00:03:46

They're strict, aren't they?

David Brown: 00:03:47

Yeah. He stayed in the US and was teaching the pilots to obviously then to send them out. So he was based in South Texas? Yeah, at a base down there.

But yeah, very, very interesting living with them. I. I lived with my grandparents. I was a bit older. All right, obviously. So how much? I was 13.

Lyn Parent: 00:04:06

Oh yeah, I see you're not necessarily impressionable, but. No, yeah, but you do what you want to do a bit. But I'm sure some things have rubbed off.

David Brown: 00:04:13

Oh yeah, of course.

Lyn Parent: 00:04:14

Definitely about strictness, about, you know, great morals and. And I think that's where my strength came from. Incredible. And he was very creative as a person.

But really you do what you say and you say what you mean and I've always really stood by that. I always do what I say and say what I mean. You know, I'm a great PR person, really amazing.

You know, put people on pedestals and really, really flounce them up and. But you know, I always stand by my morals and stand by what I say. So from that, yeah, I went to all those schools. I always wanted to be a model.

Ended up being a model with Jerry hall and all these really famous people. You know, it was, it was 81, it was a very, very great time in England.

You know, a lot of money, a lot of disposable income and I decided obviously I didn't go to university. My parents, we couldn't afford to university.

So I actually started work very young, really 16, 17, did my a levels but still worked all the way through and really just Flew really Went to Australia, as everyone does an OE when they're at uni. I thought, well, you don't have to go to uni to do that. So I went to Australia in Sydney and I went with a boyfriend, actually.

But I got a great job selling perfume, so selling perfume, which is pretend perfume. It was a. This similar to.

David Brown: 00:05:44

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:05:44

So it was similar. It was called Pierre Fouche.

David Brown: 00:05:47

Right. Okay.

Lyn Parent: 00:05:47

I had a little suitcase. And in those days, 81 people didn't really fly, only business people flew. You didn't.

Not unless you really saved the money like I did to go over and it was all commission only. And I did so well being English in Sydney and knocked on doors and learned how to knock on doors, really.

But before that, actually before I left, I worked for a company called Sleeves, which is the first shop on Legs. So I sold shirts and jumpers to all the offices and shops in Mayfair, in London.

And I met incredible famous people and non famous people, but I took no notice about being a hawker. I would just literally just blinded by that and walk in and charm people. In the end, I did so well.

I'd be going to the city, going to top people in my miniskirt and a taxi, take the orders and then I'd get someone to deliver them a month later. It was the only service industry of that kind of.

David Brown: 00:06:46

To put it in the context of time. So this was again, sort of early 80s when you were doing the modeling as well.

Lyn Parent: 00:06:52

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:06:53

So you're doing a bit of modeling, you're doing this sort of knocking on doors, things in offices, kind of selling clothes and stuff like that.

Lyn Parent: 00:06:59

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:07:00

Then you decided to go, hey, I'll go to Australia.

Lyn Parent: 00:07:03

Definitely there. Did the same thing with perfume.

David Brown: 00:07:06

Did the same thing there. And how long were you there?

Lyn Parent: 00:07:10

Just for two years. Okay. Yeah. But did so well, I brought the business back into England.

David Brown: 00:07:14

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:07:15

And of course at that time there were all the traders out there outside Selfridges, pretending to the knockoffs of Chanel C H A N E L and I had a shipment in my garage in Kensington, a little Muse by the side of Olympia and literally had four girls going around selling perfume. Did so well until one person, Soho rang up Chanel, said, there's a girl selling Chanel 19. I've been buying it for years.

How come it can only be £25 and I've been buying it for £98. Oops. And oh my goodness. Got basically it's the perfume mafia. Had, had threats, had, had the garage lit, you know, had that Stock.

So with the fabricade there. And it was really heavy. So I had to go to a special lawyer to talk about name naming rights and how to change that.

I couldn't use the name, but I was allowed to use similar too. And actually I kind of lost my guts after that. It was just too heavy for me. But I had loads of perfume. I've dumped all that.

But since then, you know, then Body Shop started up exactly the same thing. And then everyone started up. But I was like one of the first. Right. But, you know, I was always an entrepreneur.

After that, I decided I worked for a magazine called. I don't know what it's called now. Fashion Weekly. It's a weekly magazine and really hobnobbed with every fashion designer.

Did so well selling advertising space. Sold it a year advance. All the campaigns for Levi's farmers and all those. Gene.

They had a lot of money in those days with took them out for lunch, made them pay just before the hors d' oeuvre arrived and the glass of champagne. And I'd get literally kind of just so well. But it wasn't. Wasn't enough. The challenge had gone.

So I set up a business called Dressability, which was dressability, ability to dress. And I had the first. I was the first woman that really got well.

I advertised in Elle magazine myself and said, anyone who wants someone to completely design a wardrobe for them, contact me. And literally Sarah Ferguson was one of them. There were all sorts of different business women who just didn't know what to wear.

They'd come to my office and literally I'd buy them wholesale and give them three choices. Basically, I give them confidence and do their own lingerie. Their makeup. If they had an Eve event. And literally the men.

I had a Chiefs and Hawks tailor and literally had three girls go out to the city designing and measuring them up. Right. Apart from one girl measured up completely wrong. Didn't do centimeters. Did inches or inches and not centimeters.

And literally when he got his beautiful suit with. With a special red flap underneath that, these trouser legs were about 4 inches too short. You know it. So that was terrible.

But, you know, I'd fly to Paris with a. With a suit. With suits and with mink coats. For people who had mistresses us. It was so interesting.

But, you know, suddenly 89 Maggie Thatcher something went. It was the Black Monday where the whole England crashed and the middle market and everything to do with being a. Someone who.

I don't know what's name not officer. Someone who offers a service every Service interest, industry manager literally collapsed.

So anyone who was going to do anything extra, like having a cleaner, getting your clothes designed, washed, anything literally bailed.

David Brown: 00:10:51

And why was that?

Lyn Parent: 00:10:52

It's a terrible crash with the stock Exchange. It was 98 and 89. It was just terrible. So literally I decided, you know something, I'm not gonna. Everyone was very stressed, people losing their job.

It's the first really big, big crash that London had or England really. Mortgage rates plummeted. It was. Well, they went up but then everything went wrong.

So it was a big tip over and Maggie Thatcher was on the cusp at that time as well.

David Brown: 00:11:21

Right.

So you've been, you've been living the high life, you've been a model, you've been doing these service, you know, very high end kind of, you know, service based businesses because that's, you know, your average person isn't going to do that really. So you're, you're kind of playing at the high end of the market.

Lyn Parent: 00:11:36

Yeah. The first person had a. Had. Had. Had no. Had no breasts. And that was a real challenging one. So I had to get someone to design her a.

And put, you know, special bras. And then we didn't know much about breast cancer in those days, so there were challenges with that. But it was fun. I had my own.

Had a beautiful girl who's very black from Brixton, who used to open the doors to all the customers and they paid me 10,000, you know, just to be the member. Yeah, I was very lucky. I'd got a very niche market but it was quite big.

David Brown: 00:12:07

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:12:08

At that time the collapse killed it.

David Brown: 00:12:11

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:12:11

But at that time, when my challenges go, I lose interest because I surged so much. I was working six, seven days a week.

She was there to look after me, make me have sandwiches because I'd literally worked on 9 o' clock most nights because I get so into it. I'm sure that's a bit adhd because you get so involved, so into it, so passionate.

And that's been with all my events and all my things I've done ever since.

David Brown: 00:12:36

Right, so you're doing all this. Then the market tanks. So you've got to sit, I assume, and sort of look at yourself and kind of go, what, what do I do now?

Lyn Parent: 00:12:45

Well, I just.

David Brown: 00:12:46

How did that, how did that.

Lyn Parent: 00:12:47

Thought process was terrible. The Depression, because you go from one extreme to the other.

So I opened the Times because it was the Times in those days that had all the ads in the back. I looked at the highest paying job and it Was an estate agent. So I knocked on the door of an estate agent in Putney.

It's called Alan Fuller and he took me on. He was amazing. He took me under his wing. His friend had a fantastic house. He.

He owned the really well known car magazine in Richmond Road, Upper Richmond Road and. But he had Rich in Richmond right on the. My window looked out on the Richmond Park.

David Brown: 00:13:25

Nice.

Lyn Parent: 00:13:26

And I was so lucky, you know. So he. He obviously saw something in me. Didn't do any of the council houses but did all the big houses.

So I was doing all the listings and basically all the viewings.

David Brown: 00:13:36

Okay.

Lyn Parent: 00:13:37

Not the selling. Yeah, in those days. But I guess that's a lot of.

David Brown: 00:13:40

That's where everybody starts, right?

Lyn Parent: 00:13:42

Yes.

David Brown: 00:13:42

You do the showings and all that sort of stuff. But your family has a background in real estate as well, right?

Lyn Parent: 00:13:50

The rest of your lives in Paris. His name's Immobilier Perron and funny enough he's died but my brother bought the business and he's huge in Paris.

He had like 16 different agencies but now he's gone down to four, five. And he is so magnetic. Personality plus. Looks very like Andrew DiCaprio. Terribly good looking. He's about 52, 53. But he's so. So light.

So loved such a nice guy and he's done so well, you know. So. Yes. It must be in the blood. Yeah. But I mean I went from there that I decided to do something else after a year and a half. I.

My debt company told me that I didn't have to pay the debt to dressability anymore. It's Barclays Bank. They said as long as you can sign an affidavit, you haven't got a house and a boat and a very smart sports car.

We're gonna knock your debt out. So I was just very lucky. 30 Grand.

So yeah, those days was a lot of money for stock and a lot of stock and rent for the whole year of a beautiful house in Chelsea that I'd rented. So leasing that so that all got paid off. So I decided to go to new. To Thailand to have a break actually.

And I got given a job through meeting someone as estate agent to be the PR girl for Lid airport. So Lydd Latuque and Lid Airport in the old days had the old fighter pilots. Fighter planes, big Bristol fighter planes where you drove onto the plane.

David Brown: 00:15:16

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:15:17

And the plane went over to Le2K. Fifteen minutes later you're in France, which is Paris by the sea. Le Tuquet Paris. Very famous golf course.

Equisarian beautiful beaches very close to Boulogne and Calais. So I used to drive down two days a week and put events on and get more bums on the seats. And I did the other two days up in London.

So Pia had done a PR job, but pr, I guess, was really selling. So I'd get all the travel agents to come down, gave them a fantastic day and sold them the different parts of the 2K.

And then we had the Falklands War and suddenly British Independent, which was the plane that I was kind of promoting, got some threats and I decided that was enough and it closed down while the war was on. Right. What happened next is I ended up being a tour guide. I'd always wanted to go to Sardinia, right, And Corsica.

I thought, yeah, I can speak French, that's fine. I didn't realize it was in Italy. So as soon as I got on the plane and noticed it was Saga, Santa, Granny abroad.

So they're all over 6 year olds and when you're in your, you know, late 20s, you know, 60s, quite old, but, you know, I didn't talk to anyone on the plane. Got to the airport and he was bloody Italian, the coach driver, but thank God he spoke French.

So I literally did beautiful tours, but made a fortune because you, you pay, you, you charge for all the little extra tours and you get all the cash and you get amazing commission. On every tour I'd get, I'd literally befriend all the over 60 year olds to 80 year olds.

I mean, fortunately, you know, one someone died on my coach because they had a heart attack because they were next to someone that they really fancied and they were widowers or, or they were, you know, but it was really an. Half of them couldn't eat vegetarian or vegan and France doesn't do that. But it was amazing, beautiful things to go around Sardinia.

And he was very good, the coach driver. And I knew hardly anything about it. I'd read it up the night before.

My mother told me about saying about blackbird pate and all the different things, but they were pretty, well, historians. Half the people that would spend that time to go on the tour, they'd read up about it themselves. So between them and me, we just. It was a merry mix.

David Brown: 00:17:39

So, so what time frame are we in now?

Lyn Parent: 00:17:41

That was: 1990

David Brown: 00:17:43

So now we're up to the 90s.

Lyn Parent: 00:17:44

Yeah, yeah, kind of doing that. Well, my sister said, come over and have a. I'm going to get a tattoo in London. When you have a break, come over.

And I decided to fly over and have a two week break because you do back to back tours. It's quite addictive, you know, six feet, so easy.

So in lovely hotels, great food, you meet incredible people and you're always seeing new tours and meeting. It's just. It was a lovely, lovely job actually. You only do it for three months though, in the summer.

David Brown: 00:18:12

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:18:12

And I went over to London, met her in Portland Road and. And she said, I'm gonna go and get tattoo. Are you sure? You know, it was very. Not a thing to do. Naughty but nice.

too or a tattoo at that time.: 1990

So we went down to Portolo Road and I said, oh, I think I might have one. And we looked at the book and things and we went in. He was on Portobello Road.

When we went in, the guy who was in the chair, he was obviously in the navy because he had a big scroll on his arm, very muscly or the army, but he had a, he had like a English bulldog put on one and a thistle on the other. It was really bleeding. And the guy said, look, I'm nearly finished. Come back girls in half an hour. Oh, I'm not really sure about this.

But anyway, as we talked about wind called coffee and I said, when we came back, I went. He'd gone. When we came back, I went, oh, I'm the older sister, I go first. So we lay, I lay. We had it done on our groin, which is very painful.

You pull the skin up. Lion, a hard thing. And he, I just, I literally drew a butterfly with pink and turquoise wings because I'm always flying, I'm always flying. I'm more.

I never settle down for very long and I go up and always feed the. The best pollen and go, I'm sure that I'm a butterfly. And had mine done. It was about 20, 25 minutes.

Got up and my sister said, I don't think I'm gonna have it done now because it's so painful. And I went, you jolly well arc. I came for you. So she had a rose, but she went off to Greece the next day and you're not going to swim.

So hers nearly fell off. So I flew back about two days later to Corsica to meet My next tour.

And after about two or three weeks, I started getting really, like, flu like symptoms.

And then the fourth week, I stopped eating, but I was still carrying on, but just not that well, but, you know, always after the tour, went straight to bed, drank lots of water and just slept the whole time. I rang my mother up and a friend of hers had to be in Corsica.

She came to the hotel and said, you need to get back on the plane back to England to see a doctor. Do not go to anywhere here because it's a big AIDS clinic and Corsica, they'll never let you go. I went, yeah, okay, fine.

So I went to the doctor just to get some medication for paracetamol. And I was crawling to the. It's ironic, crawling to the doctor to get paracetamol to cool my temperature down, because you can't.

In: 1990

My parents picked me up and I remember saying goodbye to everyone, saying, so sorry, I've cut your tool. And they'd shake hands and put money in my hand. So that's a tip. So English, that. Never showing it. They put it in your hands.

And they all wanted to know if I was ok. They could see how ill I was by then. I developed yellow spots on my face which. Which is like a poison. Went back to England and they did every.

I was packed in ice for about three days at the highest temperature. They thought I had malaria. Basically, I'd picked up malaria from. From a Thai land trip. I'd had four months, five months previously. And they.

They brought the temperature down, but they couldn't find anything. It was fine, but I still didn't eat. And then I went back home. My mother rang, the doctor said, you've got to send her back.

She's sleeping 21 hours out of 24. It's just not normal.

So I went back reluctantly, with a vanity case, very small little makeup case they had in those days, with one pair of pajamas, bit of makeup. That was it. So I didn't want to stay in because I've been there for two weeks. It's horrendous being in the hospital isolated, you know, it's awful.

Every time he ate, they gave all the big food. All I wanted was charcoal toast. When you feel sick, you know, they don't really listen.

Anyway, the worst thing was I went back to the gynecology department. In Guildford, Surrey County Hospital.

And a woman came up and said, look, we have got to get, take every test possible now, you know, vaginally, blood tests, everything. So honestly, to eliminate what you've got. I said, yeah, just go for it, go for gold. She said, well, we are going to take an AIDS test.

I went, well, that's great. I'm not gay. It's only, it's only males that you know. And Rock Hudson died about four months ago. It was horrendous. No one even knew he was gay.

It was one for the shock for English women swooning over beautiful Hollywood rock star thinking he was this absolute swooning man. Secondly, gay and dying of aids. It was terrible. So it was like a double whammy. So I said, I have nothing like that.

But if it means you limit, eliminate it, fine. She said, yep, but we'll do it. You'll get it done in a week, in a day where everyone normally does it in a week.

So you'll get all your tests back 2 o' clock the next day. So the woman came and counseled me, said, you know, if you have aids. I went, don't worry about it, seriously, it's not gonna be me.

But she had to counsel me for about half an hour I sat in the bed. And the next, that night, your subconscious comes out. You're worried about all the men it had sex with, went through them.

And you had rang my parents up with a child, a 2p bit on a, on a telephone box like a, on wheels by my bed. All the nurses were very not unkind to me because they, they saw me as fine, wasn't ill. I was absolutely fine. I wasn't, I, I looked normal.

So, you know, I was taking bed space up, so they annoyed. Bringing me a glass of water, bringing me food, you that night.

And I cried eyes out to my parents and wrote this amazing poem because I said, if I have aids, I'm gonna die. You do realize that? And they said, oh, you know, but I don't think I have. But, you know, I'm just worried. She says, don't worry.

Diane, what would you like as a present? I said, I would love to have a Laura Ashley dressing gown and night dress, which is very romantic. And they were very expensive in those days.

Yeah, to the floor, white, fine cotton, beautiful dressing. I liked it. Anyway, I said, look, she's coming at 2 o', clock, please be on time. And the next morning I was lying in the bed waiting for her, 12 o'.

Clock. And I'd had Some lunch. And this door opened and it slammed really hard and the same woman came in and whacked the door and it slammed too hard.

So her body language was fear. And I looked up to her, I said, I've got it, haven't I? And she said, yep, you've got full blown AIDS and you've got six months to live.

And oh my God, I screamed, went, whoa, whoa, you know, I couldn't believe.

And literally I've seen the Exorcist, only up to the point where the girl's head went round because I walked out the cinema because I don't like anything to do with horror. I was disgusted by that. Honestly, my head went round. I've never.

I literally went round with anger, fear, pain and literally realizing I'd only got sick. It was massive shock, the highest shock I'd ever had in my life. It was such a.

And my mother came in, you know, at 2:00 clock and said, Darling, and I said, I've got it. Screamed at her and she said, I caught you the present.

And she went straight to the woman and said, can we get it from kissing and hugging and sharing cups of coffee? And she said, no, but we'll will now basically work with you. But didn't think about working with me. I was the one that needed help.

I really need to learn all about it. What happens now? She said, you've got to go straight on medication. I went, nah. I went, no way I'm going on medication. Absolutely no way.

I'm fine, no way. I'm not like them. I refuse to go on medication. So I said, right, I've got six months left. So I wrote a bucket list out.

I hate that word, but wrote a list out.

And I always wanted to work in a clothes store or store, always as a child, pretend to be a shopkeeper, never did it because my things are way bigger and my much harder. All the wholesale parts. I was never a retailer. So I got a job in Debenhams with dupe, spraying perfume. And I sold my car.

I had a house in London, sold that straight away. I thought, what's the point?

Sold, had two cars, sold everything I had and said, look, you know, on Boxing Day, I'd like to go to Australia and say goodbye to my cousins and, and my best friends who live there at the moment. And they said, oh, sure. I said, yeah. And I need sun, I need nice warm weather.

And everyone I told Between October 21st, 17th of October, I was diagnosed October 17th and Boxing Day, everyone cried. Apart from my Sister. She was so cool because she was in the makeup. She was a makeup artist. She was with gay people. She. She'd learned about it.

She was so. She was so kind of cool about it. Easygoing and really chilled and really listened and talked and asked a lot of questions.

Obviously really upset and cried a lot, but asked a lot of questions to them. And there were some very good places for people with HIV and AIDS in London. Is it called the Lighthouse? Really well known places.

You could get incredible information. But anyway, I flew to Australia, had a fantastic time there, asked my friend to marry me because I knew I was going to die.

I didn't want to die without being married. Anyway, he said, let's get to know each other. Anyway, I got over that, didn't need to get married.

Flew to New Zealand where my cousins were, had a most amazing time there. Met because you're dying, you're in a bubble. You're literally flying. You're like floating. You're not. Nothing's real.

So I knew I could max out my credit card because I didn't have to pay for it. Nothing's real.

So you're so much kinder and nicer and more relaxed and laid back as a person, you know, I wasn't in fear at all, but I did meet a lot of HIV and AIDS people in Sydney. It was easier to meet them and talk to them about it. They were fantastic because not many women, those had it. It was so rare.

I would get the most rarest thing. But anyway, it's just another challenge. I think, though, what happened after that? Got the plane, said goodbye to everyone.

They, you know, it's very sad to say goodbye to them. And from Australia, from New Zealand. Australia, yeah. Sydney to Auckland. Auckland, Australia.

Went up to the Gold coast and had the most beautiful holiday up there with all the, you know, with. With all the fish. And I was very lucky. Really maxed out, great time with friends.

And, you know, of course they're really lovely to me because I knew I was dying, but it was quite a shock. Having to tell people all the time, you know, got tiring. But you meet people along the way that gravitate to you holistically and naturally. And.

And I think, you know, maybe through God or through something in the universe that seems the law of attraction. Anyway, went to New Zealand, had a good time, then got a plane and got to la. And amazingly, our plane got delayed three hours.

And I happened to meet this guy as I was buying the. The voucher they gave you in LA airport because for Being late in those days you got given money for food. And I bought all these fish magnet fish.

And this guy came and talked to me. He was really blue eyed tool a kiwi and he happened to be sitting on the chair next to me on the plane.

So for the 11 hours we talked and talked and talked and literally he came up. I said, aren't you meant to be going to Munich? And he went, yes, but I just want to say goodbye. And he gave me this huge kiss.

So I didn't think anything of it. Then he rang and rang and rang while he was in Munich, said, come and ski with me. I said to my parents, I met this really cool guy.

I'm actually going to you. I've been two days with you. I'm going to get on a plane to Geneva and go skiing with him. Ended up going back to New Zealand with him in the end.

So I said, you know, I'm dying, I might as well be in New Zealand. It's a better place, very stress free, green, you know, I'm away from everyone and you can come over, you know.

Anyway, my life started there and it wasn't quite what it was. Yeah, I bought our dogs and animals to, you know, to. For the love. And it was lonely, you know. Rotorua wasn't right, quite Auckland.

And it wasn't a city. It was the smelly place where all the sulfur is and the geysers are and the blue and green lakes.

Very unusual, very ordinary houses, nothing glamorous, but lived in a lovely house on a lake and had everything which is. We had at my parents it was. But he was quite controlling. And I realized that it was February, I only had about a month to live.

So we went to the beach the whole time. Had an amazing business. So I worked on his business which was selling ski gear and ski accessories and seriously, you know, I, I just. Yeah.

So I tried.

David Brown: 00:31:56

Can I jump in?

Lyn Parent: 00:31:57

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:31:59

So. So you said you had a month to live.

Lyn Parent: 00:32:03

Six months.

David Brown: 00:32:04

No, no, you said in the beginning you had six months, but then you're in New Zealand, a month left and then you start thinking, okay, don't worry, I have a month left. Did you feel okay?

Lyn Parent: 00:32:12

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:32:13

So you've got this weird timer in your head.

Lyn Parent: 00:32:16

Yeah. That's kind of saying two things went wrong. Yeah.

David Brown: 00:32:19

Oh, of course I've got a month. But yet you're kind of like. You feel okay?

Lyn Parent: 00:32:24

Yeah, I just got on with that.

David Brown: 00:32:25

I'm curious how that, how that works.

Lyn Parent: 00:32:27

I had lots of little things like bumps came up, which is A sarcoma, which is cancer, which is from the nymph nodes. They all came up, basically. There's so many pine trees in Rotorua. It was to do with having massive asthma. Not asthma, but massive.

You know what, what do you do when you. When you sneeze for flowers? You're.

David Brown: 00:32:50

Oh, well, they're like the allergies.

Lyn Parent: 00:32:54

I didn't realize how bad the allergies were in New Zealand anyway, from all the pollen. So it was really from that that caused all that. But oh, my God, every time I went to a doctor, they'd have three doctors and then.

And then the specialist, because they. I was like a subject. Incredible. And then they'd cut out to a biopsy. Probably overdo everything. So it was really interesting for them.

I had a really good specialist, amazing specialist, and I went up to Auckland and I had an amazing specialist after that who did a synopsis of everything that happened to me from day by day and blood tests and everything, and said that you're not dying of aids. They've misdiagnosed you.

David Brown: 00:33:31

Because I think it's an important distinction that we probably have today that probably people didn't so much back then. Right. Because that was still quite early, I think, in the. In the early days. Yeah. Of. Of the whole thing.

And I think now pretty much everybody understands that HIV is different than aids.

Lyn Parent: 00:33:52

Yeah. You dive in. AIDS related disease.

David Brown: 00:33:55

Exactly. But you're just. You can be HIV positive.

Lyn Parent: 00:33:57

HIV positive, but you can. Now, you can't die from it.

David Brown: 00:34:01

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:34:02

Because you can take pills that push your immune system up and it hides against the cells. For a woman cannot give it to a man, for instance, but men give it to women a lot. That's why I've got this. Just one light.

Because there's thousands of women in Kent who got it, who have never come back for their tests because you always have. You always get blood tests when you have. You get pregnant now.

David Brown: 00:34:26

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:34:26

o I was meant to die in March: 1991

Doing all the marketing and PR for his ski accessory business and amazing accessories for sports. So I'd go to Taronga, the Mount or the beach resorts, all the ski resorts. Ski. All the ski resorts.

And I didn't really think about myself, but I did have a very good specialist. And every six months I had blood tests and he said to me, len, you have not got AIDS, you have got HIV.

Your CD4 count's been the same since you've been here. It. It. It's only 340. So a normal. A person of. Everyday person, their CD4, countless cellular, you know, red cells against your white cells.

David Brown: 00:35:21

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:35:21

to: 1500

But it stayed the same and it crept up and crept up over the years. But, you know, I. It was very lonely being hiv because people. There's always a fear of people catching something or if I got involved in a.

Someone had a terrible accident and I looked after them and. And they were bleeding a lot and, you know, and people would say, oh, lucky you haven't got. No one's got aids.

You know, there was always the jokes about that, you know. So from then on, I decided to really, for women, set up a. An event where I would raise money for women and children with HIV and AIDS in New Zealand.

And I called it Starlade.

And it was great because it was really trendy in those days to have HIV and aids because all the designers and all the fashion people over Europe would always have a red ribbon in diamante. And it was very. It was always. And then Elton John, his boyfriend that time, died of aids. So he set up an incredible charity for that.

A lot of the Hollywood people, it was very big. So I had fantastic fashion shows, like, you know, 23 designers, but my ideas are too big for a little country. I had incredible fashion shows.

Like I did a James Bond theme where, you know, the dams are forever. I had people painted in black with diamante in their hair and. And the music, you know, you get away with it so far away without having a license.

And I'd had all the drag queens coming around and everyone had to drink a. A martini and they'd put cubic Psychon's in and only one or two were real diamonds.

And the drag queen would come up with a special to see if it was a real diamond knot and someone would win the diamond, you know, it was very glamorous. Incredible events. I got in the papers the whole time. Then I decided to go bigger and bigger.

And then I brought in musicians to bring in Elton John for New Zealand, Auckland and for Sydney. But it nearly killed me, you know, I had other. I had to have a day job. I had, you know, I met. I.

David Brown: 00:37:36

So what were you.

Lyn Parent: 00:37:36

What were you doing? That was in the 90s. 94. I got married to the. To the man I met because I thought maybe it might get better. Like most people say.

Oh, that your relationship might get better. I got. I got married and it was just a disaster.

Even the day before, he slammed down a prenuptial two days before the wedding and said, no prenuptial, no marriage.

And I had 11 people from England and France and Australia there, and they were gobsmacked because if I was going to die eventually of hiv, which I would. Because you have a shorter life, why would you want. Why do you need his money? I didn't need his money. I wasn't. It wasn't about his money. Anyway.

A house. 50 Of a house in New Zealand wouldn't even get you a studio flat in London. So it really wouldn't have been my kind of gig anyway.

I wasn't that kind of person. Yeah. You know, I didn't do anything for money. I did everything for love, passion, challenge. The challenge to do.

To be successful and do it really well and not have the ego. I never even thought about that. It was never about me. It was always about them. I was quite lucky in that way. And I didn't know what made me do that.

Maybe from being with a brigadier about the strength of character and looking after your troops rather than looking after yourself. It must have been from there.

day after World AIDS Day: 2000

I went back to England with him, actually, because every year we went to England to all the ski shows in Munich and Germany and. And I just stayed, unfortunately, got pregnant with my last fiance, who's French in the 2K. And my girlfriend Jo said, do you know something?

Don't get on that plane. I said, I've got to. I have to go back to get. All my whole life, all my clothes, all my foot, all my antiques, all the things I was given.

All my life, all my 32 years of my life is. Was in containers. It's all been in Rotorua. I've got to go back. You got to sign a divorce paper in those days. You can't do it online.

David Brown: 00:39:55

Yeah, yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:39:55

So you have to physically go to a lawyer. So I've got to get back, get a divorce, get my favorite things and come back. She's right. You've got four months to do it. Jo said.

do it. So I went back in July: 1996

Two hours leaving him, which is quite big to do that.

David Brown: 00:40:25

Was that your first child?

Lyn Parent: 00:40:27

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:40:27

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:40:28

Is that your son? Yeah, but I was pregnant by a Frenchman who lives in Boulogne. Right. But I was married with him. He didn't.

He had a vasectomy anyway and he'd reversed it. But, you know, having sex. Anyway, I've had to cut a few things out because unless I'd be here for hours. We've had a jump a bit.

David Brown: 00:40:51

We've had a little bit of a jump. And just so everybody knows, we've also had a whole.

Like, I think there's a whole nother show we need to do about real estate and all that stuff, because we haven't even touched on your real estate career. No, this is everything outside of real estate, I think.

Lyn Parent: 00:41:07

And why doing these events and shows and.

David Brown: 00:41:10

Exactly.

Lyn Parent: 00:41:10

Passion to life and living.

David Brown: 00:41:12

So, yeah, there's. There's a lot of stuff here to get through, which is why I'm just kind of. It's interesting though, to kind of, you know, see.

And particularly, you know, when you and I first met and we started talking about it, obviously you do the. Just. Just for women.

Lyn Parent: 00:41:25

I do just women live.

David Brown: 00:41:27

Just women live.

Lyn Parent: 00:41:27

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:41:28

And I knew you through that and through a networking event that we both. Networking group that we both go to.

Lyn Parent: 00:41:35

That's great.

David Brown: 00:41:36

But, you know, just. Just hearing about. I mean, it's. It's like everybody. Right. Like, we've all got these amazing stories. Stuff happens.

And that's the whole premise of this show is. I mean, mean, most of my life has been a massive misadventure and ventures is kind of whether.

Lyn Parent: 00:41:52

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:41:53

You know, and whether that's our fault or whether it happens to us or whatever. Right. So you, you know, you. You were on a life track.

Lyn Parent: 00:42:00

Yeah. Right.

David Brown: 00:42:02

And then you get this news. I'm kind of curious and I know I'm jumping around a little bit and. And I apologize. And we'll get back to the. The later bit in a minute.

Lyn Parent: 00:42:10

That's really.

David Brown: 00:42:11

But, but how does that. I'm curious to know, like, what was your life plan like? How did you see your life working out before you had the diagnosis, marry.

Lyn Parent: 00:42:24

A lovely Englishman in England? Dressability was such a great business, the estate agency.

And that was fine that it was gone, but the estate agents had gone back into my fashion because I was really a fashion. In the fashion industry for all those years. I love Fashion.

And I was, you know, from modeling days to everything, you know, it's always been 20 years in fashion. I wasn't going to change.

So my, you know, I was going to be a woman in a beautiful house, have her own business, have a couple of kids, you know, quite a normal life. I never really want to get divorced. I never want to be like. My mother got married three times and so did my father. I never wanted to be like that.

I always wanted to have the one enjoy life. But I love the work and I was driven. So my driving force was my pain, actually, in this one, really.

So when I went back to New Zealand, he came to the. The psychologist and after the third, fourth time with her, he came to the same.

And I went in same room and opened up the room and I had to tell him how I felt about him and why it wasn't working. And I'd left him for six months. Six months. But in the meantime, I'd actually got pregnant with Bernard's son and I had to go back to England.

And he really cleverly, because he's a manipulator and a control, said, well, I've got my grandfather's gun, I might as well kill myself. And that turned the room around so quickly.

She told me to go outside and he got counseled because she was going to have a suicide victim on her hands. And for. If you're a psychologist or a counselor or anything, you can't have that, you know, you lose license.

And it's not about that, it's about saving him. And it was terrible. So he made me feel guilty. I stayed, had the baby, which wasn't his. We had to pretend it was his in Rotorua.

But the worst thing was I was the first woman who had had a baby being hiv. So I had special specialists flying in from Auckland. They were shaking hands with me, saying it was so exciting. I went, just get on with it.

Treat me normally. Had a cesarean section because it had to be done properly with water and so there was no contamination.

Don't understand because you've got your umbilical cord attached to the child.

David Brown: 00:44:46

I've seen cesareans out in the room. I would think that would be worse.

Lyn Parent: 00:44:51

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:44:51

If anything. I know.

Lyn Parent: 00:44:52

Well, they pulled it up very quickly. It was amazing. It was an amazing experience. And they. The nurses will take all my.

I had a. I had a very good midwife and she looked after me, but, you know, she was a bit scattered. Brain scared as well. And. But she. She did protect me because all the nurses Wanted to take all the notes, all really interested in HIV positive women.

It was fascinating for people and I understood that. But I did want to be normal. But, you know, I had a lovely little boy, caught him in frost.

I kept ringing up Bernard, you know, on phone boxes, what should we call them? What should we call them? You know, it was really hard going to phone boxes and finding out.

So he knew, he was very sad that I was in New Zealand, but he knew my passport, my husband took my passport away. He was controlling me. He, he didn't, he wasn't going to let me leave. So basically I was stuck in New Zealand. So I made the best of it.

But terribly unhappy. I mean, excruciatingly unhappy. And I remember asking him every day, saying, I've got to show Francois to my girlfriend, Joe.

I've got to show him my life in England. Just have a four week holiday and I ran every day, I asked him and one day he got pissed with whiskey and he said yes.

And I got the money wired the next day and he couldn't understand how happy I was. I'd gone from this really miserable woman who put on a lot of weight to absolutely elated because I could see my freedom.

So he said, watch it, you know, your, the Hague Convention. So you can't stay in England, you've got a six week gap only. So I took him, took him. He met his father. It was the most amazing experience for me.

Met Bernard in Boulogne. But when I went over from England to France, the French authorities let the French authorities in New Zealand know. So he knew it was terrible.

Control, manipulation, control.

David Brown: 00:46:47

So at that point, did you have a French passport or did you have.

Lyn Parent: 00:46:49

A. I always had a French passport.

David Brown: 00:46:51

So you always had a French passport.

Lyn Parent: 00:46:52

Okay. And he went on my French, French passport as a child.

David Brown: 00:46:54

Right, okay. Yeah, okay. Interesting.

Lyn Parent: 00:46:58

I called him Francois Cordwell because I was married to him, Caldwell. So, yeah, I know you're a positive.

David Brown: 00:47:06

Person that you like to put a positive spin on everything and I do, you know, the story now is very glass half full, right, Because I think you, I think you like where you are in your life and I think you like the person that you are now. And I think, you know, all of, all of that stuff has kind of formed who you are today.

But I imagine in the early 90s, being HIV positive, I know you, you put a positive spin on it now. Yeah, but I reckon that was difficult.

Lyn Parent: 00:47:34

Oh, I, I didn't cry a lot myself. I quite screamed on the first time, but I didn't really cry, you know, I. I cried with people, but I said, I'll be fine, you know? But it's amazing.

Six months of learning you're going to die. I. I have no feeling of death now. I'm terrible at funerals. I'm joyous. I'm really happy. I've known those people. I'm so.

Yeah, I have a very different feeling about death. I don't cry at funerals. I'm. I feel very blessed. I've known that person. I'm very good with people dying as well. That's the other thing.

I'm really good. Very patient. Really calming.

David Brown: 00:48:09

Yes.

Lyn Parent: 00:48:09

Yeah. I have a very dear. It's a really weird. I can't explain it.

David Brown: 00:48:13

Yeah. I don't know if you.

If you watched my interview with Rachel, but I work with Rachel on another podcast, and she deals with cancer patients now, but she started off working with HIV patients.

Lyn Parent: 00:48:23

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:48:24

And. And she has a calling, really, a vocation, I would even call it to work with kind of terminally ill patients.

And she really enjoys that and, you know, and that kind of thing.

So she worked with a lot of HIV patients back in the day, and then kind of once it got to the point that nobody was dying anymore, she kind of went into working into cancer again, because that's her kind of her thing. But I know from talking to her, I think there's you internally. Right.

But there's also everybody else, because I remember back then, my great grandmother at one point was the oldest person in Tennessee that ever died from aids.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:06

Gosh.

David Brown: 00:49:07

And she got it from a grand prince. My. My grandmother.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:10

Blood transfusion.

David Brown: 00:49:11

She got it from blood transfusion. She had heart surgery.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:15

Should have got a really big dose of it.

David Brown: 00:49:18

Yeah. And she was in. She was. I think she was about 84, 85.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:21

Gosh.

David Brown: 00:49:24

You know, so. So I've had a little bit of experience. Like, nobody understood it back then. Nobody understood what it was.

You know, all we saw that was that must have been early 90s as well.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:34

Yeah. A lot of fear. They called it the grim reaper in Australia.

David Brown: 00:49:39

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:39

I mean, you know, really horrible adverts on it and things, really. And they look at you. My thing was the dirty sex disease.

So whenever I used to go and raise money for HIV and AIDS patients, women would never pay their dirty sexes. I went, actually, you're wrong.

David Brown: 00:49:58

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:49:58

You know, we'll.

David Brown: 00:50:00

We'll get to that little bit in a second. So is it. Or was it more difficult back then, or is it actually more difficult for people today? Because Nobody talks to. To understand it.

So like you said, you still get people who like, pick up your drink.

Lyn Parent: 00:50:17

Cup or like whatever. Oh God, you've got hiv. Can I catch that? No, you can't. You can catch a cold by drinking from someone's because you. Because of the saliva.

You can't catch anything from me. I'm now on medication. Last 10 years, I'm on medication, right? So for 35, for 25 years I wasn't.

Last 10 years I did because my CD4 count dropped so badly at one time and I couldn't raise it naturally.

David Brown: 00:50:44

So is it. Is the world kind of still in the same spot? I'm thinking of other people, not from you because obviously you do these events.

Lyn Parent: 00:50:51

Men now, that's the whole thing, you know, sex is so easy and, and men have sex with men now. So, you know, even married men, a lot of married men who married with children have sex with men. They don't really use condoms and they. And it's.

It's rife and people not even talking about it. So my thing is what women don't talk about. But going back to my stigma.

I ran away in the middle of the night and left Francois in a cot because I was so terrified and hated my husband so badly I had to get away and I left him. He was fine, he was comfortable. It was one in the morning. It was New Year's Eve, one in the morning. He was fast asleep.

I knew I'd come back three days later and I drove to Auckland. I met a guy. I'd met a guy called Term. We drove to Auckland.

I knocked on the door of the winds, which is your government money, and there was this guy from Newmea, opened out on New Year's Day and I cried to him and told him the story about this guy who'd been. What he'd done to me and the Francois at French and my hiv. And he was so kind, no one does that.

He opened up the computer and handed me a thousand dollars and put it in my bank account and said, right, get yourself a flat now. Rent somewhere in the next two days, try and get a job and go back. And literally in three days I had found myself a flat with a girlfriend who's.

I rented her flat with her and got myself a job. Went back and he'd already put interim custody and I couldn't.

And basically the next six months I was fighting going to lawyers and barristers to get Afri Davids to for a family court case which took five days and he got full custody, 63 old. Of a child that wasn't his, over the mother who was the full blood. It was terrible. He used my weakest weapon against me. He told.

He put them all into fear. It's so easy. Told the old judge, told all the lawyers, she's gonna die. Why would you give. He needs to. The child needs to be with me.

I've got a lovely big house, a stable house. She's got no money, she's living with a boyfriend up in Auckland. None of it was true, but I had a little job. But no, he was right.

But it was terrible. But the bereavement, the shock, and that was way worse than getting HIV, getting that diagnosis. So I spent 13 years trying to get him back.

Going to court case. I went to nine different court cases to try and get custody back and I nearly did. And in the end, I said, no, in the end, it's not going to change.

I've still got to drive every other weekend. So I was allowed to talk to him one day a week on a Wednesday. And my husband then used to pull the plugs out of the wall. So it was always engaged.

It was the worst pain I'd ever had in my life, the stigma. So it made me do these events even harder. See, what you do is pain. You go into the events.

You can say that while I'm doing that now, but I'm not a little bit pain. It was an unbelievable part of my life, though.

David Brown: 00:54:07

So how long were you there doing that?

Lyn Parent: 00:54:10

So that was 90. He was born in 97 and I left and he. I lost full custody in 98. October. Funny, everything happened in October. October 98.

And then when he was 14, he ran away from home and came and lived with us, so. And. And funny enough, he still lives in Rotorua.

David Brown: 00:54:31

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:54:32

Still sees his stepdad, his kind of stepdad. And he's a solo dad now, so the whole thing has gone around. And an amazing solo dad of a beautiful girl. But, you know.

But yeah, but he still goes into pain. He tried to commit suicide and we rushed on with a gun. So he is still in pain. I know he's still in pain.

He still has a lot of pain because he was living with a family that wasn't his. Had no feeling the man was a Kiwi, even though he loved him. Gave him a lovely house. His stepmother wasn't very nice. I'm French, English.

His heritage is here. His father's 90 now, lives in Boulogne and hopefully you'll come over and see him. Francois with Elena.

But, you know, I always wanted to tell a story and write the book, but I realized that it would bring up a me too movement in New Zealand because so many women in New Zealand, Maoris and pkehas, there's so much abuse. And my husband's mentally abused me. Not physically. Mentally, yeah. The lies telling me I was not good enough and literally depression.

And I went crazy that I ran away. You know, I ran away literally in the middle of the night. $20. I actually only got $20 because I decided to prenuptial.

So I reinvent myself all the time. So.

David Brown: 00:55:50

So you did that. You.

Lyn Parent: 00:55:52

You met.

David Brown: 00:55:54

You get restarted.

Lyn Parent: 00:55:55

Yeah. And he didn't realize how bad for 30 years of going to court was going to be. But. And.

And he lost his business from it because every other weekend we were going to motels. I was asked to have my son on my lap for two hours and went back home and then for three hours. And it was so much control. It was terrible.

So we lost a lot and we lived a life. But I started all these events, did day jobs, but the events were really big and they were fabulous.

And I worked then I was with a woman called Jane Brunning, who was in a group called Positive Women. And I met women who were hiv. So we. We formed a circle. And Positive Women is really big in New Zealand.

And I went to Mac every month and said, why are you giving the money to the New Zealand AIDS Foundation? For the men, because they don't wear lipstick. Only 10% of them wear lipstick.

You know, why are you not giving to women and children for education purposes or things that they can't get to? And in the end, they gave their $140,000 to the women. In the end, it was amazing. It was all transferred. But I was very unpopular.

You know, I was in the main papers, magazines for my events, the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. The men hated me because, what's this little English girl?

Massive, massive events with, you know, we're talking about 13,000 people, down to 2,000 people coming to different events and always raising money for women and children. And I got bigger and bigger ideas. But in the end, Covid hit.

COVID flew over to England in: 2020

David Brown: 00:57:55

s all the way up to: 2020

Lyn Parent: 00:58:00

Yeah. Okay. I went home for two weeks.

David Brown: 00:58:02

Weeks, I mean, obviously.

Lyn Parent: 00:58:04

But I only went to England and saw my sister in Copenhagen. She was living there then. So I never went to Europe.

David Brown: 00:58:10

Right.

Lyn Parent: 00:58:11

Never saw my brothers in Paris occasionally. And my sister and brought my family over only once because it's so expensive. It's always me. I bought France at the beginning.

And then, and then, and then I was allowed to with lots of, you know, he had the hay convention, the caps law. It costs so much, much. Then I had a daughter called Amira and she literally. I got pregnant during my court case.

So it was like an angel out of heaven. I mean, it was amazing. It was like a second chance.

I was so lucky, you know, having sex normally, everyone said you're not allowed to, you know, whatever, you know, I mean, that is a very good rule breaker.

David Brown: 00:58:50

That is a question everybody wanted me to ask you.

Lyn Parent: 00:58:54

Condoms.

David Brown: 00:58:55

Yeah, Like. But yeah, everybody wants me to ask you about sex.

Lyn Parent: 00:58:59

One in a millionth. Yeah, I could actually give it to my boyfriend at that time, right? No, we had condoms after. I had.

by the time I met him in, in: 1997

No, twice a day. Amazing sex. No, absolutely fine. Yeah, yeah, but that's true. Yeah, but I was just lucky.

David Brown: 00:59:38

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 00:59:38

Because he can. But, yeah, I couldn't give it to him. I would have sex when I was having a period, but I couldn't give it to him. Right.

It's really men, the semen giving it to women with all the blood that goes through women and it goes right up. It can attach. No, yeah, no, but again, rule breaker. Just very lucky. But again, extremely, very, you know, had a. Had a cesarean. Very strict.

Even a woman came in when the baby, Amira was born and came in and said, you are so irresponsible. And my partner that told to get out, you know, you're so responsive. That baby could die. You know, she could transmit.

Because they could have transmitted HIV during the birth.

David Brown: 01:00:22

Right.

Lyn Parent: 01:00:23

So unfortunately, they were given azt. Francois was given azt, which is a liquid form which terrible. And no breastfeeding.

And AZT was a liquid that I had to give in before the milk, before I gave the bottle, which was a really strong, strong product, which is like a antibiotic. I don't know. It stops some seroconverting. Actually. It stops it. I gave up after four weeks and then lots of injections to see if he'd. I said no more.

And they were very angry with me. I said, enough. If he hasn't. Nothing's wrong with him. Four weeks. But you know what happened with that. Both of them got this AZT because she got.

She was pregnant. She was born. Amira was born three years after Francois. They were never ill, literally never sick. They got sick when they were like 13, 14.

David Brown: 01:01:11

Right.

Lyn Parent: 01:01:12

Never sick, never had flu. All the child's illnesses, sicknesses, never.

David Brown: 01:01:17

None of it.

Lyn Parent: 01:01:19

So their immune system must have tripled so high. They were never sick up to 14 and then 14.

I think they got their own antibodies or whatever and they became sick and they both got illnesses in their own. Right. Actually saying that. And I actually think it's from the azt. Right. So that's another story. You know, he has terrible, horrible stomach things.

And I think it is from the drug that you were given at birth.

David Brown: 01:01:41

Right.

Lyn Parent: 01:01:41

But I stopped it. Yeah.

David Brown: 01:01:43

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:01:43

In the end. But the stigma has been so bad in New Zealand. They're quite racialists there anyway. They're real redneck people and. But so bad even now. So bad. Yeah.

And here I talk about it, you know, I've had a cold because I think it should be in conversations everyone talks about. I used to talk about breast cancer. I used to call it the pink fluffy disease because it was always pink pink. It was always a fluffy disease. The pink.

All the sadness. But no one talked about hiv.

David Brown: 01:02:12

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:02:13

Ever, you know, so.

David Brown: 01:02:15

And I think that's still today.

Lyn Parent: 01:02:17

It is.

David Brown: 01:02:17

People just don't know why. I think because.

Lyn Parent: 01:02:23

Sex. Breast.

David Brown: 01:02:24

Yeah, yeah. Because they've sexualized breasts and everything. I think there's a lot tied up in that.

Lyn Parent: 01:02:29

That. And now there's so much abuse that's come up.

David Brown: 01:02:32

But I. I wonder if it's. Again, because you have sort of the HIV and then you have the AIDS bar and. Because now it's not an issue really,.

Lyn Parent: 01:02:41

But syphilis is and gonorrhea is really bad. It's quite rife.

up a really big event back in: 2017

They could pick up like a pregnancy test that you just prick their finger, put the blood in a little tiny little plastic thing and it eliminates hiv, gonorrhea and syphilis and basically they're clear and then they don't have to wear a condom. You're young. So I talk about that at school. So I always used to be a public speaker so I was speaking all the time.

Another thing to make a bit of money in New Zealand you got paid 140. The speaking engagement. I was really happy to do that.

David Brown: 01:03:33

So you. Let's. We'll. We'll get back to England. So you're stuck here for Covid.

Lyn Parent: 01:03:40

Well, so I door knocked. I didn't want to be with a dementia 83 year old mother who was absolutely horrible, I didn't know her. Awful in a bungalow.

So a friend, very nice friend, gave us me, lent us a car and I literally drove out every day and she used to come with me sometimes sit in the car, read a paper and I'd give her sandwiches and things in the car and literally I door knock. The biggest houses, really famous people in Cobham oxhot, going to St. George's Hill, South Fields, Wimbledon.

I'd literally drive beautiful places and private drives and I'd buzz. So I said hi, my name's Lynn. And they'd always open the buzzer and then I'd say hi, my name's Lynn, I'm a Kiwi from. They'd love the story.

And I said let me sell your house. And they go oh no, no, we've already got some. And I went yeah, we've been on the market for eight months, months.

So I rang up film companies and a girl from mine was a makeup artist, she told me the names of film companies and honestly they would do it for free because no one was working, right. So they'd film the houses, these incredible houses.

And I'd talk about the houses with the great things about them and the really terrible taste and people love the controversy and the difference set it up. So I worked for. I was with my girlfriend Jo, she said how about us setting up a license work for Finding Country? Which I did.

And literally I was, you know, 30 viewings at a time, four or five offers immediately on the phone. The highest offer, bang. I was selling houses so quickly it was just ridiculous. I didn't really know what I was doing but I sold them out of passion.

I loved the people I Befriended them because I had no friends. So I was very personal service with them. Always on my WhatsApp, always talking to them, really good with buyers.

And I decided I got bored with coffin not sure. I drove down to where my parents lived which was, you know, Surrey Wormley, Chillingfall, Guildford, Scodelming.

And I knocked on a 30 million pound house and said how about me doing a video? I'll pay for it. If you like it, let me sell it. And I did. I did a video, had a message, amazing experience.

And they said yes, we'd love you to sell it because we've had three agents who've done absolutely nothing. And I stupidly sent it to a girlfriend. Her brother was a fine and country agent.

He drove down, knocked on the door, told the owner that we'd got fired, made him sign his document, took it away from me like that. All because I sent them a. And I got a Bentley up driving up, you know.

David Brown: 01:06:16

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:06:17

I mean I made a film of movie of the house and it was so amazing and the stupid. I was so stupid. I was so excited. I want to share it with the other comrades associates of finding country of the area and they loved it.

You know, I'd really gone somewhere different, different echelon. But I'd give it. Given it to the wrong person whose brother was really well known and knew Finding country really well and basically got given.

Then they fired me in 24 hours. So that's another story because I'm actually suing them. So you know, I'm actually going to court soon over the.

Because it was a conspiracy in the end. And my girlfriend took out 38 grand out of my bank account. I've never talked to her since so very. That's the estate agent story. It's amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. But I still sell houses like that by look after to four.

David Brown: 01:07:10

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:07:10

At a time.

David Brown: 01:07:11

And like I said, we're. The whole real estate thing is a totally separate conversation. Separate again. My. My whole family owned real estate agency.

So my grandfather was a real estate agent in Memphis for 25 years.

Lyn Parent: 01:07:24

Wow. What's it called?

David Brown: 01:07:26

It was Germantown Real Estate. So it's a suburb of Memphis and back. Well, I. I think it's still the same in America. You have to have a license and.

Lyn Parent: 01:07:36

You have to be a. And you're sitting in New Jersey.

David Brown: 01:07:38

Yeah. You have to be a practicing agent for I think four or five years and then you can become a broker.

So he did his time and then he became a broker and opened his own agency and then had Four or five people that worked for him. And my mom had her real estate license for a long time. My uncle had his real estate license.

Lyn Parent: 01:07:54

All the same time. Wow. What did you do?

David Brown: 01:07:56

I've never had one. I've never had one. But I used to go to the open houses.

Lyn Parent: 01:08:01

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:08:01

Anyway, that's a whole separate conversation we'll have on a whole different show.

Lyn Parent: 01:08:05

Very interesting.

David Brown: 01:08:06

I think we'll do that on another.

Lyn Parent: 01:08:07

No one really has that guts to.

David Brown: 01:08:09

Talk about it because on another episode and I, I have very strong. And I just bought a house here and I have very strong feelings about how it all works in the uk but we'll, we'll get into another time.

But I'm curious. So you, you've been in New Zealand for what 25, 30 years?

Lyn Parent: 01:08:24

Yeah,: 1990

David Brown: 01:08:27

So 30 years you've been in New Zealand.

Lyn Parent: 01:08:29

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:08:29

You get here, you, then you're stuck here for a while, didn't know anybody,.

Lyn Parent: 01:08:34

Two and a quarter years and then you kind of.

David Brown: 01:08:36

So how, how did you just go, go, I'm done with news. Did you just close the book on that and just kind of go. I'm kind of in a different place.

Lyn Parent: 01:08:44

I had a husband out there and I had a 19 year old daughter and a 23 year old son and a 3 year old granddaughter. And I had a really good business selling coffee from Vietnam. You know, I was doing really well. So it couldn't have come at the worst time.

But you know, you could get to New Zealand but you had to do this special thing where you stayed in a hotel for two weeks. Yeah, the COVID set and only half an hour to go out to garage and throw in a hamburgers. I couldn't do that.

Just I couldn't get the hotel to marry up with a flight. It was too stressful in the end. So I was doing so well in England. Why would I, I mean I literally, I was popping them up like buttons.

28 Houses I sold in a year. It was unbelievable. Yeah.

And meeting incredible people and loving conversations and loving being back in the country and loving and put my mother in the home in the end.

And I met an old friend who I'd known since I was 28, who's a very well known lawyer and a jazz musician called Robert and he went Thompson Snell and you know he's really good in jazz and he's very kindly really, you know, from my girlfriend took all this money, I didn't have anywhere to live. And I ended up living in his Manor in Brenchley. And, you know, we've had a relationship since then and it's been amazing.

But I went back two and a half years later. The day that she said, we get. I got a flight the next day. Said to my daughter, you know, she's 21 then, long time. You know something?

You do so much better in England. You need to grow. I said to my husband, I think we'll give it a year because you could have come over. And I came to see my son.

And I was so wealthy, I given the. I had hired my car, stayed in hotels. Never had that life. When I was in New Zealand.

Went and rented most beautiful houses and then decided to set up a nest because I started working for Nest, who was my manager at Finding country at the time. He set up his own endorser in Somerset, and He supported me 150 and was very good at all the people that would complain about me.

He never said he didn't care. He said, you know something? That is Lynn. She says it as it is, and she tells you the truth. You don't like it. I'm really sorry.

Go to a slapper, dapper guy on the high street and he'll tell you what you want to hear. So I decided to set up a business in New Zealand. So, you know, I sell houses and my hickey and.

But I go under an agent because I don't want to do the license. I don't want to spend six months doing my license. Yeah, I'm not there long enough.

I go that back for three or four months a year, December to March usually. And I basically film them all here in October, November, and launch them in March because that's the best time to launch something. March, April, May.

So going back, you know, I. I still have a son there who's still in pain. But, you know, he's a builder, he's a father, He's. He's a hunter. He's got his three hunting dogs.

He goes out in the woods with his friends and they have trackers now, and they run when the dogs have found the boar. I mean, really kind of, really. What's that called? Really savage kind of barbaric type behavior. But it's. It's very natural.

And then he fishes, you know, with his daughter, with all the Bowies. And it's amazing, amazing life. And they cook their fish and they eat raw fish.

They can bring the fish back, you know, It's a hard life in New Zealand. It's not easy. They're not doing well, in New Zealand. But he listened. I think he lives in poverty. He doesn't need to.

His stepfather's quite wealthy up the road. But he still sees him, you know, he still loves him. Because you can still love someone who's been painful to you.

David Brown: 01:12:24

Yeah, well, yeah, you know, there's, there's a lesson in that I haven't done for years. I mean that sounds, you know, I mean I grew up in the south, in America.

Lyn Parent: 01:12:33

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:12:33

And so we had, you know, 300 acres of farmland and 35 acres that the house was on and you know, I grew up hunting and fishing and.

Lyn Parent: 01:12:41

So good, you know, my children. It's amazing. Amir in France was so lucky. She lives in London, she lives the high life, works in the city.

But she, they, they realize when they're here, when she's here, she's been so lucky to live in that kind of wilderness and, and, and, and that kind of life. Yeah. More laid back and relax people.

David Brown: 01:13:03

I have, I have a son. And when we, we, we were living in West London out in Richmond, which was amazing. I know all the places you were.

Lyn Parent: 01:13:12

Talking about, but they're still going. I can't believe.

David Brown: 01:13:14

I absolutely love, love Richmond and that whole West London thing. But when it came time for him to go to school, we knew that the schools were oversubscribed and it was going to be a bit challenging.

I was working for a company based in Tunbridge Wells at the time and we kind of thought we found a place down here that we really liked that was a house on a 35 acre farm. So it was amazing. And there were all these, you know, there was a small pond and there was all sorts of stuff.

Lyn Parent: 01:13:38

Right.

David Brown: 01:13:38

We thought it'd be amazing, you know, for him to have that to grow up job. Did he ever go outside?

Lyn Parent: 01:13:43

Did he.

David Brown: 01:13:45

He went outside twice, I think with.

Lyn Parent: 01:13:46

His mates and that was it.

David Brown: 01:13:48

So we could have lived in London.

Lyn Parent: 01:13:50

Yeah, he could have, but, but he.

David Brown: 01:13:52

Did have an excellent, you know, school that he went to for primary school and he had a very good school. You know, he went to St. Greg's here which was, we picked Greg's because it had a lot of international students.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:02

Good.

David Brown: 01:14:03

And with me being American and his mom being English, he had kind of a mix upbringing.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:08

Thought.

David Brown: 01:14:09

And so there were loads of other kids that had kind of mixed parents as well. And so we, you know, thought he might fit in better there and I think he probably did.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:19

But.

David Brown: 01:14:19

Yeah, no, so I, I totally understand growing up now. We've, we've moved now into A village and in, in Hawkehurst. But.

And that was fine because we were in the middle of nowhere so we, we had to drive everywhere. So we couldn't even go to a pub, we couldn't eat. There was no corner shop, there was no nothing thing.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:37

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:14:38

Whereas now we can walk everywhere. So we can. We've got three pubs within walking distance. We've got, you know, Waitrose, A test, like all the stuff.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:44

Have you.

David Brown: 01:14:45

So it's really nice. Yeah. So, you know, it's a totally different thing and you know, he's a bit older and. And we're all enjoying it.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:52

Good.

David Brown: 01:14:52

So I totally get that.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:55

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:14:56

I'm a little conscious of time.

Lyn Parent: 01:14:58

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:15:00

So you're, you're in the uk, you've started selling houses, you've become an estate agent. That's going really well.

Lyn Parent: 01:15:06

Yeah. Yeah, really well.

David Brown: 01:15:07

And then what prompted you. Because I do want to talk about this as well. So what prompted you to start doing the just Women live thing?

Lyn Parent: 01:15:14

Ah, last year I. I had a. I was in New Zealand and I was coming back in March and unfortunately I woke up with vertigo. Terrible vertigo. It's literally free falling out of a plane and then from vertigo four days later. No balance, nothing. I had to have a stick.

I had a tia, which is a trauma stroke stroke because I went down to my son and he started getting very angry and blaming me and not liking my posh accent and thinking that I was everything. But I don't. He just didn't know me. And he was the unhappy one and literally had a trauma stroke in front of him.

But he didn't realize, literally your body shuts down and literally I was like a statue on the sofa. And then he said, go to bed. And I went to bed and slept for like 12 hours. Got up and left the next day. I shouldn't have.

And I ended up in hospital for about a week. And they wanted to know if it was something to the hiv. The inner ear had been eaten away. Because I'm like, I'm a 65 year old. I'm actually 75.

Really internally, because you're. It's depleted so quickly, it's eaten away so quickly. And anything you put in your mouth and any medication, it comes out in another way.

Anything, Panadol, anything you take, you've got to take responsibility because it'll come out neither cancer or anything.

David Brown: 01:16:36

So I stopped taking ibuprofen because I was. Well, I have, I've had some various injuries, right. Knee injuries, whatever. And I was taking ibuprofen Regularly.

And then I saw a couple of articles talking about how actually it's really bad for your heart, particularly men. Yeah. And it can actually lead to heart attacks and everything else. And I was kind of like, okay, I need to stop taking that then.

Lyn Parent: 01:16:57

Work out what, what you need.

David Brown: 01:16:59

So there's always some, right?

Lyn Parent: 01:17:01

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:17:02

Some knock on thing.

And it's, it's, it's been really annoying because I've had to deal but, but now I have to go and deal with the issue that's causing the pain and whatever. So.

Lyn Parent: 01:17:11

Always. Yeah.

David Brown: 01:17:12

But there is some side, you know, there's some knock on to everything. You're right.

Lyn Parent: 01:17:15

Yeah, definitely. And, and it took a month to recover. Definitely not getting on a plane with vertigo. So I didn't get back until the middle of April.

And from that time I was sitting in cafes all day just talking to people. My ex husband would pick me up, take me to a cafe and I could walk back with a stick. And literally I talked to incredible people.

And I realized a lot of people under abuse, a lot of women very unhappy, very quietly not realizing when I was talking to this. Suddenly it clicked that they were actually being controlled because sometimes you don't realize.

And I literally, when I came back I went, you know, something launched all my houses. Click, click on right move. Because I, I'd film them all the year before and literally I thought I don't want to just sell houses. I don't want.

It's a bread and butter for me now. It's just for me to live, pay my credit card off and pay for petrol, pay food and things like that. Seriously.

And it wasn't doing very well because of what happened last year and it's still now the war. I want to do something for women. So I literally said just women live and literally started it at the Quantum Club.

God, it was really hard to sell it though. All the people had sold houses too. They were really for it. I got Aston Martins out. She was a great girl, Danny. She really helped me.

I got the red carpet. We did the pims because it was June. I did it June this time last year and got women talking their stories.

And an amazing woman was a very well known judge solicitor, divorce list that told us incredible story. But unfortunately it was all a bit too dark. No one felt very good when they came out. So 80% of those people haven't come back.

David Brown: 01:18:58

Did you have a jazz singer?

Lyn Parent: 01:19:00

Yeah, I had Stephanie.

David Brown: 01:19:02

Yeah. So I was there.

Lyn Parent: 01:19:03

Benson.

David Brown: 01:19:04

Yeah, so I was there at the beginning of that because my son Worked at Quantum.

Lyn Parent: 01:19:08

Ah.

David Brown: 01:19:08

At the time. So he actually worked during the event.

Lyn Parent: 01:19:12

June and September. Which one was he at? So June was. June was a singer from New Zealand.

David Brown: 01:19:19

In a blue dress.

Lyn Parent: 01:19:21

Chadwick can't remember what kind of. She must have been September in September. What she looks like. She looks like Diana Ross. She's really well known. She used to sing for Tina Turner.

She's really well known. Stephanie Benson. Oh, that was true to Chadwick. That was my first one. But she was incredible.

Yeah, she was a real 60s, 70s, 80s, well known singer in New Zealand.

David Brown: 01:19:46

But I don't remember.

Lyn Parent: 01:19:47

But it was an amazing event. But 80 of those people haven't come back because it was all too low. But they loved it. But it felt. They didn't feel good.

The second one, I did the same and paid for her. And Stephanie Benson was an incredible singer. But again, people telling their stories too much. It didn't feel good. I said, I could have changed this.

So this year, March, when I went back to New Zealand, I redid it and I've got now incredible. So I got a, A, a doctor who's a vagina doctor and who was very well known, private. So you're never going to see it. She's 290 an hour.

But to go there, it's very hard to find. So busy. Then I got a fantastic bad bitch hypnotherapist who. Incredible woman. And then I had other people. I had a woman about face.

I had all different people. They were very uplifting. Everyone had makeup as they came in. I got Prosecco.

So four weeks, three weeks before that, Quantum had closed and I found the White Bear and the Orangery and it was so uplifted. I had this one called Naomi Buff who does sound bath, healing and really good breath work. She got everyone to dance when they sat down.

It was so good, so amazing. The goodie bags were incredible, the drinks were good. Food wasn't that good. I suggest everyone buy their own food, to be honest.

Or eat before they go. It was so good. We had a 60 return ticket price for this one.

David Brown: 01:21:15

Nice.

Lyn Parent: 01:21:15

And we sell 45, 48 tickets now I can literally max 60. I don't really want more than 60, but now I've got incredible speakers. So I've got a singer.

So I've got a comedian from Chichester going through an incredibly bad divorce with four children. So her comedy would be her pain. But she's so fast, so quick. 15 Minutes allowed to talk. Yeah. She said. I said, so what? How do you get up every day?

How do you do this? She said, I listened to this beautiful woman whose words she writes them herself. And she writes words for uplifting women. I said, what's her name?

She's Starling's World, looked up on Spotify, did some research. Guess what? She was so enamored by the event. She's coming down from London to sing and she did the most wonderful speech saying why she was doing it.

It. All her words and all her writing has been for uplifting words really for women. And it is for women. She must be an abused. Yeah.

And it's incredible how people come out the woodwork to help to aware for.

David Brown: 01:22:18

Awareness and, and what I like about it and the reason I wanted. I definitely wanted you to talk about it in the end is because it's kind of what I'm trying to do with this. Right.

There's some other shows out that, you know, talk to people that have had, had, you know, whatever abuse or all sorts of stuff in their lives. But what I think is missing from those is, is the kind of the. The positive bit at the end. Right. It's like. Happens to all of us.

Lyn Parent: 01:22:44

Yeah. But.

David Brown: 01:22:44

Right.

Lyn Parent: 01:22:44

In all sorts and help.

David Brown: 01:22:47

Yeah. And you know, how. Does, how does that help us form who we are today?

Lyn Parent: 01:22:52

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:22:53

You know, and. And that there is sort of a light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not always a train when you're in it.

Lyn Parent: 01:22:59

It's terribly hard when you're in it.

David Brown: 01:23:01

When you're in it, it's, oh, my.

Lyn Parent: 01:23:02

God, you know, you can't keep that stuck record going. You've got to. Whether you feel it, you've just got to keep. Because I lost all my friends. I mean, losing custody of a child, being hiv.

I lost everyone in New Zealand. I just reformed that, you know. But I realize, you know, you're like a magnet to people if you're happy.

And it's like my mother said, you know, you cry alone and you laugh with everyone and it's so true. Do. It's the same with everything you do and do what you say and say what you mean. Be a do it. I've always been told I was a do it girl.

I literally do it. And I'm a real creator.

David Brown: 01:23:35

Well, and, and we can tell that from your story and all the different things that you've done. And I. I also like that about you, that you're just like, you have an idea and you're just kind of like, well, screw it, let's just try it.

Like, what?

Lyn Parent: 01:23:46

Another thing. Just screw It. Because I'm trying to do something with Richard Branson to set up condoms with really famous. Famous.

Famous as people's names on, you know, pictures.

David Brown: 01:23:55

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:23:56

Yeah. I'd love to have Rihanna's name on a condom packet. You know, the one that sits outside the back of your jeans.

David Brown: 01:24:02

Right. Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:03

No one's done it. Why not? And he's still got a condom factory. But Rush and. And Durex. Not interested.

David Brown: 01:24:11

It's interesting.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:12

I'm constantly doing new things.

David Brown: 01:24:14

We're now talking about condoms. I just went to a. A technology show.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:19

The podcast one?

David Brown: 01:24:20

No, not the podcast one. The one before that, which is the media production technology show. It's a.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:25

What is that like?

David Brown: 01:24:26

It's more like. It's cameras and. And hardcore professional level gear. Yeah, it's more for like filmmakers and. And live broadcast and TV and that sort of thing.

But a couple of the vendors there had condoms that they were giving away, saying, oh, you know, are you prepared? Which we thought was quite interesting.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:44

Are you prepared what to come in or are you prepared for the night?

David Brown: 01:24:48

Are you prepared for.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:49

Have they signed it?

David Brown: 01:24:50

Was it written other logos on one side?

Lyn Parent: 01:24:53

You didn't keep one, did you?

David Brown: 01:24:54

Yeah, I've got them. I'll show you.

Lyn Parent: 01:24:55

Can you show it to me when we see each other?

David Brown: 01:24:57

I'll show you the room. I'll show you. So it's basically like the logo on one side and then it's directs on the other.

Lyn Parent: 01:25:05

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:25:05

So it's like a proper con. It's just. They just do custom branding on. So anyway, there you go. We're well over an hour. I think that's a long time.

Lyn Parent: 01:25:14

Too long.

David Brown: 01:25:15

We could go for probably three hours if we started talking about real estate. But like I said, I think that's. That's probably would be interesting for a different group of people. So let's not. Let's not go down.

Lyn Parent: 01:25:25

That just went live or just. Women is half red. So I've done half HIV and the other half is purple. Right. Which is abuse.

David Brown: 01:25:35

Okay.

Lyn Parent: 01:25:35

Because abuse comes in all sorts of forms from child abuse predators. The male abuse with children abuse is a massive form.

So my thing's an awareness of abuse charity and if I find a woman who's really struggling with her children and think if I can take her out and give her one hour's free solicitors, you know, a really good hour and maybe a massage from the people of my group that can give that. That's an awareness and I can pay them a little bit for the extra that's where the money will go. It's not going to siphon into two charities.

e charities and they're about: 1600

David Brown: 01:26:19

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:26:20

So it has to be. It's, it's actually so dedicated.

The people that come, people that I meet that I see that I really have and they obviously write up why they need it and then I pull all the people that being the speakers. I've had really good speakers and I've got of plenty of thorough speakers now.

Not a lot of psychologists but you know I found someone's a trichologist last week. All the women and men who lose their hair. She was fascinating how you get your hair back.

David Brown: 01:26:48

Right.

Lyn Parent: 01:26:49

So she's going to be a speaker but I've got a Just Men Live starting next year. So I'm going to do that in London. Probably not here but maybe in London it'll be much more gruntier. It'll be Sophie. My Sophie works with me.

She has decora design and I'm estate agent for Ness. She, she's amazing design and designs all the houses. That's why I sell my houses.

But declutters puts a few per cushions all stages them has three bowster arrow. Her and I basically support the event. We are the event people. That's why it happens. We sponsor it. It's our companies that sponsor it.

It doesn't make money. It will make money soon and that money will go to those people. So more podcasts, more exposure. But at the moment I hand pick my people who come.

I don't put it. It's funny, I haven't put it out in the plethora of the world yet because it'd be too big. It's nice having it personal, cozy.

David Brown: 01:27:44

Yeah I like that. Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:27:46

Few well known people coming in but they come in without you knowing.

David Brown: 01:27:49

Yeah.

Plus it gives you a chance to build something and to kind of try, you know get, get it going first and then if you wanted to do something bigger you could. But again I like, yeah, I like that the, the smaller intimate and I'll.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:02

Pass it to someone else eventually. I, I'll. You know, I can't do it forever.

David Brown: 01:28:06

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:06

But you know I'd love to pass it to someone else, you know who is as good and got the same vision.

David Brown: 01:28:11

Once it's up, it's, it's. I understand this side of it as well.

Sort of once it's up and running it's kind of loses its interest so much because you're a builder, you like to build Stuff.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:20

Absolutely.

David Brown: 01:28:20

And.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:20

And I'm the men's one. Lenny Henry would be a great compa pair. Robbie Williams would be a great singer.

And he's got an incredible charity for children and she's down the road now. Yeah. He lives in Brenchley.

David Brown: 01:28:33

I know.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:33

Do you know that? Do you know where he lives?

David Brown: 01:28:34

I don't know exactly where he lives, but it's not far from you, I imagine.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:38

And he. Him and his wife has a great charity. There's so much suicide with children from social media. For him to talk to men about that.

David Brown: 01:28:49

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:49

Be amazing up in London for him to talk to women about that. And he can just break out into one song.

David Brown: 01:28:55

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:55

You know, but I wouldn't be able to.

David Brown: 01:28:57

I'll get him in here one day,.

Lyn Parent: 01:28:58

But I wouldn't been advertised that. That. Yeah, be great. You know, I'll get them in here. I'll get the. In here one day as well. Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

David Brown: 01:29:04

We've talked about that in the past. So.

Lyn Parent: 01:29:07

Great supporters, though.

David Brown: 01:29:08

Yeah. Amazing.

Lyn Parent: 01:29:09

Like Jon Ojin giving all his honey gins. Oh, amazing one. Charlotte Tilbury in Fenix, bringing all the makeup artists, putting a makeup stand. Everyone has all their lips done.

And giving them the launch of their lipstick. I don't know how much that costs normally. So incredible support from visual people. Yeah. Not all. Not all.

You know, I'll give you one hour of a mediator or I'll give you, you know, here's actual physical things that you can eat, touch, smell. But they have great fun with this one. So there is a. The. There is the rawness side on all my podcasts. So I have just Women podcasts.

David Brown: 01:29:49

Thank you. That's a great segue because I was literally about to say we can't leave without talking about your podcast.

Lyn Parent: 01:29:55

Podcast. And. Oh, my God. Had a woman who.

Who was married, had been married three times, who had incredible abuse where her first husband bit her face off and dragged her through. It was so hard and we were in tears. But she's incredible now. And a sound bath and a breathing expert. Her life has just changed in the last 20 years.

But the podcasts are the real story, so you can actually stop if it gets too much. Much.

David Brown: 01:30:22

Yeah.

Lyn Parent: 01:30:23

So I've left the stories, really, for my podcasts. So I think it's. And they're hard stories and they're good stories. And then. And you hear a bit about what they're doing after.

They're more into the grunt. Yeah. And then the events are the people that can help. They don't sell themselves. They just talk about what they do for women. Why, why it works.

They don't sell their name and put their email address. Yeah, they put it in a bag. But it's not a selling game.

David Brown: 01:30:50

Exactly.

Lyn Parent: 01:30:50

No way.

David Brown: 01:30:51

It's not a pitch.

Lyn Parent: 01:30:52

Not like. Yeah, not networking. No one is a sticker. But 90 of the women come on their own and they meet really lovely people.

David Brown: 01:31:00

Brilliant.

Lyn Parent: 01:31:00

Yeah.

David Brown: 01:31:01

So what's your podcast? Where can people find your podcast?

Lyn Parent: 01:31:04

Yeah, Just Women live on the Instagram and Spotify. Just Women live on the Apple. On Spotify and YouTube for people who don't have either. Yeah. On all three. Yeah.

David Brown: 01:31:15

Lynn, thank you very much for coming in.

Lyn Parent: 01:31:18

David. Yeah. Thought I was going to cry my eyes out because it you just unstuck one of my plasters of my past and it's always hard to get back in your past.

David Brown: 01:31:26

It is a little bit. And. But thank you for your time and thank you for the conversation and we will come back another time and we will rant about real estate.

Lyn Parent: 01:31:34

Oh, my God. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye.