Half heard conversations, whispered asides – all are ‘grist t’ the mill’ to a writer. I shudder to think what other folks have overheard from my own conversations. How many things have I said that could be misconstrued? Still, this thought does not stop me from storing up the snippets of chit-chat I hear as I walk down the road or stand in the queue at the supermarket checkout. It is a fair-game kind of eaves-dropping in my eyes, way superior to phone hacking I might add. The News of The World might have done better to stand in a queue at Sainsburys or hang around a bus stop or two. Their…

It is now 5.20pm and I have finally got round to writing something, anything! Well, isn’t that just the way of things? I was awake early. I had all kinds of plans, beginning with taking the dogs to the woods. My day’s diary ran like this: 8.30 am …and the dogs are in the car waiting for me to drive them to the woods (easier than walking round the fields here where Flossie has to stay on the lead). I have put some laundry in the machine, cleaned and tidied the kitchen and made the beds. The rest can wait! 8.45pm am The woods are a glorious mix of red…

The world became a much more accessible place for me, way before the internet brought us into each other’s living rooms. I wonder if there are others, born in the 1950s, who have traditional comics and snail-mail to thank for their first contact with anyone from abroad? From the age of seven, I looked forward to Thursdays because that was the day my weekly comic landed on the doormat. The comic was called, ‘Judy’. I read it from cover to cover and each year, on my birthday, with the 7/6d (seven shillings and sixpence) I accrued in birthday gifts from my Great Aunt and my Grandparents, I would purchase the…

It is the little things that bring a smile to our faces. Today, I phoned my mother to collect her weekly shopping order. This is always a humorous affair. Who knew there were so many varieties of tissues? My mother has a friend who is now bedbound and has Dementia. She often orders items for him that she likes to take round when she visits. Hence, I am asked to source ‘Vimto’ and special rice puddings and on occasion, things like ‘a big slipper’. (This when he could sit in a chair). The other things she regularly orders are bananas. “Do they look big?” she asks. I peer at the web page…

This post was scribbled during my recent holiday to Rhodes.  What makes grown men and women think that riding a donkey up steep, winding steps in temperatures of 40 degrees, will be fun? I have not fallen into this trap I hasten to add but plenty do. Hence, as we wander through the labyrinth of streets that make up the City of Lindos, we witness many folk of mature years struggling to climb aboard these truculent beasts of burden and once aboard, to stay seated. Nor is this penchant for self-harm shared solely by the older generation. As we step aside to allow one donkey-train to pass, we note a…

This is the second of my scheduled re-runs covering my absence from the computer. This post was first published on 27th September 2010.   I have always been one to make something out of nothing, in the creative sense I mean. I wouldn’t like you to imagine I am prone to hysterical outbursts at the slightest provocation! So, given a few cardboard boxes and some egg cartons when the kids were young, I’d disappear with boxes and children for a bit, returning with a space ship or a sweet shop or anything else that our imaginations could dream up. So confident were my children that I could make them anything they…