THE SMALL THINGS

I’m back in the missing stage, today. Yesterday I was in the stripped of my skin stage. The day before I was in the baffled, hit a brick wal...

Yesterday, I decided I would take a day off from grief. I was going to have a happy day. I was perfectly prepared for failure (failure and I...

It’s National Poetry Day. I love National Poetry Day. I’ve been thinking about poetry from the moment I got up this morning. The ones that ...

In a book whose name I cannot recall, Miss Marple puts her wise old head on one side and says: ‘When you get ground elder really badly in a ...

Author’s note: I’m not sure whether this makes any sense or is much to the purpose. I wrote it instinctively, without thinking, after long h...

I’ve written quite a lot about the old friends lately. I think it has to do with motoring towards fifty. I shall be forty-eight at the end o...

The work starts to shift. People sometimes wonder why it takes so long to write a book. I wonder why it takes so long, especially when I can...

At last, my mother is home from the hospital. I lie on her bed and talk of Michael Scudamore, who has died. ‘I can see him now,’ says my mot...

Today would have been my father’s 84 th birthday. I sometimes think he should have lived to be a hundred, but the truth is that he hated ol...

There’s been much sadness in the family in the last week, but oddly enough, today I did not feel sad. I remembered my father, who died on th...

Crazy, long day, so packed with work that I thought my ears would fall off. My time management continued poor, especially as I thought that ...

Quite often, sadly often, I write here: one of the great old gentlemen has gone. Today, it is one of my great old gentlemen. My very dear g...

Ah, I was going to go back to the most excellent discussion on anger, but time has beaten me. Time is beating me quite a lot lately, but I d...

Author’s note: I got carried away with this one. It is long, baggy and tangential. The point gets lost somewhere in the sixth paragraph, and...