In the woods, my head is spinning at all of the wild bounty springing forth from the trees and bushes. Elderberries as black as night hanging heavily like chandeliers, hawthorns bursting with bright red berries and, in a secret corner, a stash of sloes I have been patiently watching, waiting for the perfect moment at […]

Walking upstairs late in the evening, after a sultry warm April day, I am hit by a smell in the air I remember from my childhood. It takes me back in an instant to Saturday mornings, waking up in my single bed with its orange throw and feeling the crisp flat pages of “Tiger & […]

At dinner on Sunday evening my father in law says, from nowhere, that the way to enjoy your work is to make sure it doesn’t involve other human beings. I tell him that, for me at least, the opposite is true. In a way I can understand his jaundiced view because he worked most of […]