I have had a life full of untold stories.  All eighty-five years of it – school days in wartime, work in foreign lands, exploits at home.  Every one of them was an adventure, every one a tale to tell.   When I was younger, it didn’t matter that I had nobody to share these memories with,…

A year or more ago, and thanks to Mary Berry, I came across the best sponge cake recipe ever.  It was a success the first time, and has been the same ever since.  So, last Christmas, when I asked for a baking book, of course I stipulated it had to be one of hers.  I’ve…

It is supposed to be quiet here, and yet it’s busy with subtle noise.  Before the age of a computerised system, there are no repetitive beeps or clacks, just the satisfying click and clunk of a stamper, and the sighing slip of tickets going from book to box.  Chairs on surreptitious wheels trundle and spin…

She sat in the yellow bath and wished it was avocado.  The tiles were small and black, pressed narrowly against each other, closing in on her.  There was no window, just a noisy fan and hurtful electric light.  She couldn’t hear anything beyond that fan, and the slosh of water.  Not even the echo of…

The water is choppy along the estuary today.  But we’re out in the boat all the same.  I’m sitting uneasily at the back, my new fleece pressed tightly around me by the comically huge life-jacket I have to wear.  Its collar blocks the view either side of me, so I just grip the red, curved…

The walk with my wee girl to and from my son’s school has the same view, but entirely opposite speeds.  On the way there, I only take in the most noticeable features as I speed past with Ciara in the buggy – more aware of the bumps on the pavement and the height of the…

Other men will stop and talk; / but the walking man walks.  So sings James Taylor.  I understand he was referring to his dread of changing seasons, but I took another meaning from those words… Over the past few years, and especially of late, I have been fretting over my lack of friends, and the…

I am not a decisive person.  In fact, you could say that indecision is one of my most persistent and frustrating flaws: from the superficial to the crucial, I am terrible at making my mind up. For example, it always takes me just a few minutes too long to answer my husband when he asks…

Reading my dad’s ‘African Memoirs’ with all the (albeit embellished!) tales of his time working in Sierra Leone in the ’60s, my pride of his adventurous spirit was mixed with a sense of shame at my lack of one.  It got me thinking about all of the amazing pioneers amongst my ancestors – my mum…

When I was about 8, my cousins decided that we would pitch a tent in the woods behind our holiday home, and camp out overnight.  During the day leading up to that, it seemed like a fun, adventurous idea, but by the time evening came, I wasn’t so sure.  I remember a growing knot in…