THE SMALL THINGS

Today, I am mostly sitting very, very still. Except for this morning, when I had a canter on my red mare of such gloriousness that I felt m...

Book sent off to agent. BOOK SENT OFF. We are still in early doors and there is a long, long way to go. But at last it may be seen. If sh...

Just pausing in my hectic work day to give you a little Friday loveliness. (I say that with great certainty. It is loveliness to me. I quite...

Work, work, work, work. It starts off feeling like a mountain to climb. Or mud to wade through. Or something very, very hard. Then I get the...

I have no words for you today. I emptied all the ones I had out of my head and onto the page. This might usually be a cause for gaudy celebr...

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...

The kind of slang I use tends to be very, very old school. It is more likely to be drawn from Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford and PG Wodehous...

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...

I go to sleep with the gentle sound of Vic Marks in my ear and wake up to nothing . There is only the plucking, howling sound of wind beatin...

Be magnificent, said the voice in my head as I woke up this morning. Actually, that was not the first thing it said. The first thing it said...

On the radio, a nice, intelligent, articulate man says: ‘I have worked with thirteen ministers of education and none of them has done much g...

Author’s note: sometimes I write a blog and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s right and tight and pointful. Sometimes I am unsure. I wonder, d...

I have done something amazingly stupid and wrong. I have caused upset to people close to me. It was not anything said, but things done, or r...

Last night, for no reason at all, I missed my father so much it felt as if someone had kicked me in the chest. The old gentleman is close by...

An incredibly busy and productive day. I’m not sure I quite followed my own advice to go slowly, but then nobody’s perfect. The sun shone, ...

I learnt something today. A while ago, I read a line which said something like – the secret of doing things well and happily is to do them s...