I saw it from a distance, but it didn’t seem that big.  As I walked closer, it grew and grew, and then disappeared.   All I knew was that there was a tall tree behind me, but all I could see was part of its trunk; its damp, rough bark, making curvy paths up and down. …

Years ago, it was a love-hate thing.  There were moments when I felt I had mastered it, but many more when it beat me.  I chose it to be different, and to escape comparison.  The teachers were the same, to begin with – all keeping me playing in the same clef as I would have…

I don’t know what got into me.  I was getting tired of ticking over day in, day out.  Fancied a change.  So I aimed high, jumped in fact.  Far above my comfort zone, far beyond the things I’m used to.  It was an adventure, the first leap.  Nobody came with me, they were all either…

On Thursdays, after using Dr Seuss to teach prepositions to 30 clamouring ten year olds, she makes her way down the steps and through the narrow streets of Vieux Nice.  The blissful taste of passion fruit ice-cream marks time until she reaches the shore.  (She always orders that flavour, still too uncertain of her accent…

This is the way she walks home, every day, even on Sundays.  It’s easiest, or safest maybe, in the summer.  The dark winter nights frighten her more, although she welcomes the cover they give.  In her long, black, heavy coat, she is unseen.  It’s filthy, but on the colder days, she can’t do without.  Besides,…

I was good once, I was clever once, back then I was better.  Now I am not what I was, and my hopes for what I will be are shaky.  The middle one is the worst out of the past, present and future me.  Or is it. The past is now an air-brushed version of…

She grips her knees, hides her head, and hates being where she is.  Life was not meant to turn out like this,  She was not meant to be here, alone in a foreign place, waiting for a husband whose work carried them away from home.  Work that comes and goes, making them wonder why they…

I have climbed these steps before.  But this is the first time I have really noticed them.  When I was small, I was more worried about my precarious heap of buckets and spades, or rushing to catch up with the longer legs of my siblings.  There was a photograph of them framed in our house,…

I heard a very good sermon last Sunday, but as usual, I got hold of one small part of it, and it’s worked on me ever since.  The minister was charting the progress of the apostle Peter’s faith through his various encounters with the miracles of Jesus.  The one on Sunday was about Peter getting…