There’s a Swedish expression, ‘no cow on the ice’. Back in the old days, the cows of Scandinavia were allowed to roam outside all year round. Farmers would make a hole in the ice for them to drink. Sometimes a cow’s forelegs would fall through the thin ice and the farmer would have to pull…

To be NOT ok.

When I was pondering what I would write about last week I was thinking about blankets. At the time I was walking with heavy steps along my street, fighting against a horrible sense of fatigue. Quite often, when I try to explain fatigue I talk about having a wet woollen blanket dropped over my head,…

Than you’ve decided they are.

Sing a different song.

Do you ever realise when you walk past other people, or sit near them on the bus, that they are all hiding something?

How do you feel when you think about next week, next month or next year? Apprehensive? Despairing? Resigned?

I caught some of the proms the other night. There was a glaring absence however. The diminished orchestra was there. The animated conductor was there. But the audience was not.

It’s possibly a self-fulfilling prophesy, but my latest book The Lost Things is threatening to disappear into oblivion. Call it my inept marketing or people’s suspicion of that condemning word ‘subscription’, but this book is flapping round like a dying fish in the bottom of a boat right now. When I write and publish a…

I’ve said this before, but I don’t like going on a journey just for the sake of it. The only mystery tour I’d tolerate is like the one my granny went on years ago which was called ‘the mystery tour to Armagh’.