THE future has suddenly become crystal clear for a North-East woman with a varied career.

Mother of two Helen Waine, a former office worker, nurse, farmer, care home worker and veterinary nurse, is the new owner of Castle Crystals, in Barnard Castle.

Mrs Waine, 40, was a regular customer at the specialist shop, which sells fossils, crystals and minerals to collectors, hobbyists and souvenir hunters.

"You could say I've taken a leaf out of the book of Victor Kiam, the American businessman who liked the shaver so much, he bought the company," she said.

"We have a caravan near Barnard Castle and I was forever popping into Castle Crystals. One day I was chatting to the then owner, David Rennison, who was having a bit of a bad morning, and he said 'If someone came into the shop now with a pot of money, they could buy it' - and that set me thinking."

Mrs Waine, from Rowlands Gill, near Gateshead, bought the shop as an investment for herself and her husband David, an inner city school teacher on long-term sick leave, and their two children, Michael, 12, and Paul, ten.

She is receiving business start-up support from the Durham office of Walker Hall Associates, one of the region's leading business development companies.

It is another big change in her varied working life.

After a brief spell working in the office at her father's MoT test centre, she trained as a nurse and worked in hospitals for seven years after qualifying in 1980.

In her first big career change, she went to agricultural college, gaining certificates in agriculture and dairying, while paying her way by working on a stock farm in Northumberland.

In 1991, following the birth of her first son, she went back to nursing, working part-time in a care home, while still keeping her hand in on the farm. Then, in 1998, after combining her nursing and farming skills to successfully nurse her family's horse through illness, she got a job at a veterinary practice in Gosforth.

Mr Rennison, who established Castle Crystals on The Bank, close to Barnard Castle's narket cross, is now its wholesaler, supplying both local minerals and fossils products and a range of products from around the world.

"While relying a lot on holiday trade, the shop has many regular customers - mineral collectors, hobbyists and people interested in healing and spiritual stones and the like - so I hope to expand the range of products for them," said Mrs Waine.

"Thanks to television programmes like Time Team, there has been a huge swell of interest in archaeology, palaeontology and other geological pastimes, and I feel now is a good time to be in the fossils and minerals business."