I must have been enjoying myself immensely at the first garden party committee meeting a couple of months ago.  We had decided on the theme; it was being held the Monday after the happy union of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, “Royal Wedding!” we decided unanimously, “dresses and hats, embossed invitations, champagne, linen and silver.”…

Sometimes I wear myself out so completely that this morning I could quite easily have laid down in my tracks and given in.   I didn’t.   I was in the middle of the 100 acre woods pulling brambles out of the trees racing against time. I usually wear heavy rubber wellingtons that weigh me down and…

The part of Rigsby Lane where I live is a private, dirt road. Just as it crosses FM543 it transforms into a black top. On my first walk I smoothly avoided the cracks that ran along its surface sprouting grass and weeds and looking quite at home. For the first few weeks I believed this…

Shads loves to climb onto the top shelf of my closet. He usually doesn’t stay long unless the vacuum cleaner is on the rampage. Most of the time he’s on a quest for one of the toys sitting, motionless, out of harm’s way minding their own business. He creeps in silently so as not to…

Today, when I heard the news that a talented man we had all once worked with in the theatre had passed away un-noticed and was lying, unclaimed in a distant city morgue, I could only whisper a prayer of gratitude that his mother had gone before and would not see in his lifeless face, the promise…

Now that I’m a mother of twenty/thirty-somethings I find it refreshing to go through their early photo albums; when they were really young. I regard fondly the exuberant, toothless smile on my oldest’s face during a photo shoot at Olan Mills poised with a piano, shiny chin, one year old. The little boy, whom I worried…

May 8th has rolled around again and I am amazed that I still feel such a sense of calm on this day, as if it is my special day… But it’s not. It’s my Mum’s. Perhaps it has something to do with VE day falling on her 21st birthday in 1945 marking the end of…

I used to have a closet in our old house, upstairs, where I would go and sit and say my morning prayers in the winter. No-one bothered me, it was too small, just enough room to turn around in. It was my version of a War Room where I did battle with God about all…

After working at Caudalie Crest I step outside to look up into the sky to see what is making the buzzing noise I could hear on the patio. I spot a small engine powered hang glider, drifting beneath the clouds, red against the blue. I watch, craning my neck to follow its slow progression. I…

I have been thinking about the culture of hand held and not so hand held devices. An advertisement at the cinema caught my eye this week,  It was for a new, interactive, game. The commercial took place on the ski slopes of somewhere and there was a Mum and two children sitting beside a brazier,…