1997 Ford Escort Constant cold stall and high creep

Hello there.I have recently purchased the above car and are having terrible problems when first starting. The car starts fine, first time, no problem at all. It goes into reverse fine enabling me to reverse off of my drive but as soon as I go down into Drive, it stalls. I then keep going back into Park and have to keep trying to get it into drive. After about 10 minutes it goes into Drive ok and keeps going without any problems, even if I stop and have to restart, its fine. Another problem is that it has a very high creep.I would think its way too high and could prove dangerous in an emergency stop situation. It just seems to want to go on its own ! I am really hoing you can help. With many thanks,
Faye Sharp