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...

This morning, in the bath, I had a radical thought. What if I was happy, for my mother’s sake? Here is the ludicrous thing about death. A pe...

Cremation people: I am sure you are good and thoughtful and kind to children and animals, but who had the meeting where it was decided that ...

Another of the great old gentlemen has gone. My father had three sisters, all very glorious and splendid in their different ways. One of the...

It’s quite an odd thing, to cry for a stranger. One may feel sadness and melancholy and regret for so many deaths: the ones in the newspaper...

Pictures first today, because I want you to see the visual joy before I give you the words. There was a ride of loveliness and delight on th...

The older I get, the more I think that life is made of moments. Of course there are great life arcs and plans and goals and sweeps. Humans m...

I think quite a lot about ordinary griefs. I know that really one should not put things on a scale and that not everything is relative, but ...

Quite often in these pages, I write the sentence: ‘Another of the good old men has gone’. Well, another of the good old men has gone. The st...

When the disasters come, I never know what to do. There is a vast sense of powerlessness. Sometimes the disaster is so big and so ugly and s...

I started the day pretty well. Then, out of nowhere, a mood came and got me and snapped me in its crocodile jaws and threw me about the plac...

I did such a funny, lovely thing this morning. I took my mare for a walk. I usually have many rational explanations for this. It’s importan...