Last weekend I was depressed at the state of the world. This week I've been angry and have been firing off letters to those in power.  ...

I'm too angry to blog. I have just written two separate letters to my MP about 1/ child refugees and the UK Government's reneging o...

Last week a good friend told me she was overwhelmed by the news: it made her anxious, stressed and depressed. I gave her some glib reply a...

What do you think of SatNavs? Do you use one? Dave has no innate sense of direction, so when he was given one a few years ago it revolutio...

It is perhaps the last mild and still autumn day before the weather changes, and although I  have a blog post in mind, I want to be out in t...

It's been my birthday week and I have spent most of it in Wensleydale with my brothers and sisters. This is four of us.  I don...

First, you need to know that I prefer cinema to theatre, but also that I have been to the opera before. I've seen a Mozart opera - I ca...

Except for the very ending, which I am going to write when I have read it through.

There are so many sorrows in the world  - Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Las Vegas, refugees and asylum seekers all over the world - a thousand blog...

I just finished reading American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. It's a fictionalised account of Laura Bush's life. I bought it on the ...

Canal Bank Walk Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal Pouring redemption for me, that I do The will of God, wallow i...

Lux and Cece are currently highly amused by a  new book called  I AM BAT .  It's a simple book for 2-5 year olds but Lux is 7 ...

This is Cecilia. On Twitter, she's @thesprouut

You know that scene I was writing? Where the person turns up after twenty years and I had no idea what was going to happen? I've been en...

I'm loving writing this unplanned novel.  When I started it I knew the theme and the setting and not much else. I'm seven eighths ...

I know that some of you come here for light relief and others (don't laugh, it's true because they've told me so) for a burst of...

This little interchange happened years ago... "So what is it like, living with a writer?" someone asked Dave. "Ver...

Can you think of any books that made you cry? I asked my writer friend this yesterday and she said Life and Fate and she described the s...

Do you swear when you are alone? with close (adult) family? with your children or grandchildren? with close friends? with acquaintan...

Do you read quiet novels?  I think the last two books I read that could be described as quiet were Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock ...

Did you ever have one of those nights where you go to bed tired and at a reasonable hour and you wake up at  1.30 a.m.  after disturbing dre...

Hello!  It's time to get back to the blog, and to work.  I just had the loveliest long weekend staying near Liverpool with some new fr...