acts of kindness towards me over the years, some of which I have been able to reciprocate with favours, others I haven’t. I hope I’ve shown gratitude for them all. The most recent, however, was from a local electrical shop owner, who gave me a discount for a TV I bought from him because I…

If I had to get a tattoo it would be an image of Shakespeare, because he is the most famous, and ultimate of all our literary geniuses. I have been a Friend of Shakespeare’s Globe for the past twenty-two years, and try to see a play there three or four times a year either in…

I try to deal with uncertainty by concentrating on other things, but sometimes it comes back to the same “if” and I’m wondering and hoping again. A lot is down to outside influences, like the weather or the plans/actions of others as to whether you can move forward, and sometimes, something completely unexpected occurs that…

When we had a holiday in Denmark in 1980, my dad (who was not Danish but had obviously done his homework) introduced us to his own version of the Danish open sandwich known as smorrebrod (the o’s had slashes through them giving a variable pronunciation of the letter.) We were self catering, so every morning…

. . . they do things differently there” This quote opens L P Hartley’s “The Go-Between”, which I read when I was studying O level English literature back in the 1970s, and have read a couple of times since. It has been quoted in various ways by the media over the years because it is…

I’ve thought about the books I have read, and it’s hard to pinpoint one particular book, but I have, in the last few years, read some women’s fiction books that have had the word secret in the title only to find it revealed in chapter two. I lose the momentum then, and question if the…

My partner and I booked a holiday in Yorkshire for April 2018, so I decided to read “Dracula” as visiting Whitby was part of the itinerary for this package holiday. While he ate fish and chips I walked up to the Abbey, then sat in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church below, imagining what it…

I enjoy reading many types of books these days, but I tend to only read them once as time is limited and I want to spend it reading other books. but, as a child, I would read Enid Blyton books, in particular the Malory Towers series over and over. I used to get told that…

What if you lived in a perfect world where life ran smoothly all the time? It would certainly remove stress and you could guarantee a good night’s sleep every night. But where’s the excitement or the motivation? Life without chaos would be very bland because organisation means that there is no need to think, or…

Many years ago, just after I left college, I went through a period of unemployment, which meant I spent a lot of time at home with my parents. My dad was a keen sailor and had ordered a new sail for his boat. He had originally asked them to deliver it at home, but then…