For sale — Next to Morden tube station was a shop with a long curved window filled with pipes and ashtrays and lighters and sundry items such as standard one-size-fits-all mothers. It was a tiny shop, mostly counter and shelves of tobacco in crackling packets and cigars in tins. A glass cabinet displayed…

Mankind’s urges are simple and universal — It was that barren time, the week between Christmas and New Year, where in the UK half of mankind is off work and blissfully bored. To kill a few hours, my husband and I drove to a historic house and garden. At the entrance to the historic park that encompassed…

What a performance — The pond is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. A gobble and a burble as the water, freshly regurgitated from the pump, tumbles in fat bubbles like the croaks from some giant frog. The fountain spills its froth of white with a constant…

It was spot-on — My cousin and his lovely partner have been visiting from Canada. To be fair, my cousin has a passable haircut, and he doesn’t wear one of those red and white jackets with a giant maple leaf on the back. (Have you looked at a Canadian recently? …

Have the last laugh — We attended hospital every day for weeks until death was so imminent we could not count on it to arrive during daylight. Now there was no hope, they moved her to a room at the far end of the corridor, far away from the nurses’ station. …

Pure pie-in-the-sky — When I was a child, my mother suggested that I might like to become a missionary when I grew up. She often professed things she did not believe. But being young, I was not yet conscious of her true nature, so I entertained the idea. ‘But how will I live?’…

But it was at that house our family unravelled — I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a fine window in the facade of a pretty building can bestow. With apologies to Jane Austen I’m not an architect and know little of lines and light and angle, but windows move me. …

Embrace the thoughts you thought were nothing — Every day we slaughter our finest impulses Henry Miller I used to read a lot of books about child rearing, thinking to learn some skills that I did not gather in my own dysfunctional childhood. But at some point, overwhelmed, heart plummeting and spirits sinking, I would have to close…