Despite what I said yesterday, I am more or less resigned to never seeing my mother again. Whether I am resigned to the concept of death its...

My daughter just called. She wanted to talk about her Gran: she misses her. She misses her Gran. I miss my mother. So do my sisters an...

It is exactly a year ago today that I got back from an overseas trip and rang up my mother to see how she was, and she told me that she wasn...

8 steps.

I can do several unaided steps on the slackline so far and here is the proof: Yeah! The record this morning is 7 steps. It is much much ha...

Did you know that Plotting for Beginners – an intelligent, funny holiday read - is available in a Kindle edition ( as well as in book form...

My brother Pete read my post about my trip to NYC and commented on how succulent the pastrami at Katz’s Deli looked. So just for you, Pete ...

Bad news, or exhaustion after a difficult day – so many ills can be banished by watching 25 minutes of Neighbours . My ex-pat friend El,...

I’d noticed a faint musty smell in the back porch since I got home from NYC, but hadn’t been able to work out what it was. Then yesterday...

I had no idea what hard work it is to balance on a line. I am addicted to the slackline and did four half hour sessions on it yesterday. La...

  I was wallowing in my ultra-comfortable bed, enveloped in soft white Egyptian cotton sheets (oh what luxury) in my Manhattan hotel, and...

I loved my weekend away in New York: it was interesting and fun, and the best thing was spending time with my family -Isaac - and Wend...

I had a wild time in New York, but it was sooooh lovely after too many hours in transit to drive out of Manchester in sunshine under a bl...

I should be asleep by now but I'm too excited.

Is this too much to slot into one and a half days in Brooklyn? Go to one of those delis where you have a plastic box and fill it up ...

One of my lovely brothers rang the other day, worried, after reading my post The Unvarnished Author . But since I wrote it, and Shafia – a...

1/ Stay cheerful. 2/ Stave off the foul cold that is trying to leap from Dave to me. I need to keep my distance and take Aconite. 3/ Pra...

I said I’d been doing lots of thinking and talking to people, and in doing this I have come across Joseph Campbell . He has a lot of helpful...

I thought I’d dealt with death when my father died, 7 years ago. But now I find that I didn’t, and I think that’s because when he died, m...

Sadly, the saxophone lesson didn’t go well last night. I have been practising and playing my tunes at home, but when I got to the lesson I ...

I enjoyed art class last night. The teacher talked about colour, and got us to make some colour wheels with twelve segments, using the th...

These autumn mornings when we step outside the door, we have to be careful where we tread. There is always a bloody scattering of headless f...

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately – as part of that angst I mentioned a couple of posts ago - and I’ve been talking to friends abo...

One day in July we were standing on Chesterfield station, waiting for a Virgin train to whisk our family away, when a woman with long blonde...