Journal

Spring is supposed to be the season of new beginnings, but it’s a little late getting started this year. (As I write this the poor cherry tree, in full blowsy bloom, is tossing its branches frantically in the wind, its petals spiralling down in gusts of rain.) I can...

If each of the months have a colour, October is Orange. There’s the changing leaves, of course, the rosehips, like mini kumquats on the climbers I haven’t got round to pruning, the skies at 5pm when the short afternoon subsides into a russet sunset, and the tide of...

After a summer of drab grey cloud and torrential downpours, September has arrived in a blaze of glorious gold. This weekend I had to dig out the standby bottle of Factor 50 I bought in May, in readiness for a repeat of last year’s heatwave, and the t-shirt I found in...

I met my husband on midsummer night 1991. It seems astonishing that this was 32 years ago, though I don’t know why it should; the fact that years merge into moments as we get older and the past stays as fresh in our memories as if it had been preserved in layers of...

It’s Sunday evening and I am writing this the old-fashioned way – longhand, in a notebook. I’m sitting in my writing hut (writing hot might be a better name, now we seem to be having a sudden heatwave) but the iMac screen on my desk is black and blank and I don’t have...

I’m writing this on a green, dripping Monday morning, with the smell of spring rain coming in through the open window. Typical British bank holiday weather, though this is a bonus bank holiday, so we can’t complain. This time yesterday we were waking up to blue skies,...

When I was little I remember the November excitement of waiting for the first Christmas decorations to appear. In my small town I knew the likely places for the first sightings – the farming supplies shop on the corner, the house I passed on the way to school with the...

I think February often feels like this. After the rush of new year enthusiasm and energy for clearing the decks and making plans, there’s a sort of pendulum swing back and a drawing inwards. A sense of – yes, I’m looking forward to doing this thing and getting started...