Ten (and a bit) things I’m learning from Walk for Water:
A few reflections as we amble contentedly towards the end of our 10,000 steps a day Walk for Water challenge*: 1) It’s actually pretty...
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Feb 3, 20213 min
Picking up pebbles
When my children were small, a trip to the beach always meant coming home with heavy coat pockets: pebbles and shells scraping and...
Dec 9, 20201 min
I was a stranger...
There’s a woman waiting in the doorway of the Amnesty bookshop. At first I think she’s queuing so, obediently, I stand myself and my son...
Nov 27, 20204 min
Ticket to Avignon
‘Avignon, aller-retour’ my friend pronounced clearly as we got on the bus. She took her ticket and moved on. My turn. ‘Le même, s’il vous...
Nov 11, 20203 min
Autumn Carnival Cakes
I have wanted to make Frittelle di Carnevale, or at least to eat them again, ever since a brisk bright February morning in Venice nearly...
Oct 23, 20203 min
Foreign Kitchens: the life-changing potential of welcoming the outsider
When people ask me where my love of language came from I say it all began in foreign kitchens. One in particular. In a pretty white...
Oct 14, 20203 min
Weaver and child
One of the first linocuts I ever made, dabbling in a college art course way back in my twenties, was this African weaver and her baby. I...
Sep 2, 20202 min
Cup of tea?
If I had the chance again, I maybe would have said one more thing. Five years ago, I had mere days to write a eulogy, to summarise a...
Aug 2, 20203 min
On ditching the Satnav
Fiesta at Els Àngels (2nd August 2015) It was the satnav - or rather our disdain for it - that took us to Els Àngels. Scoffing at its...
Jul 14, 20202 min
Give up your dizzying potential
There are few things I love more than buying art and writing materials: vibrant inks, chunky cartridge paper, pencils, shiny new...
Jun 22, 20203 min
La Mer - Charles or Bobby?
The sea was Mediterranean aqua this weekend, blatantly masquerading as somewhere far more exotic than the south coast of England. They...
May 13, 20203 min
A six-year-old's lesson in hyphenation and grief
Mum and the roundabout Standing in the British Library bookshop, a year after my mother died, I had a nostalgia rush so strong I could...
Apr 23, 20202 min
Quiet Garden
I’m sitting with a memory. A different time, a different season. It was one of those gifts of an empty calendar day that can sometimes...
Nov 22, 20192 min
How to fail
They’ve put a spin on it. Made it sound like a good thing. You learn so much more from your failure than from your success. It’s what...
Jul 17, 20192 min
swimming in the middle lane
Some years ago a friend wrote to me. Previously she had dropped her faith like a heavy coat in summer, finding it uncomfortable,...
Dec 6, 20182 min
B-roads
It shouldn’t surprise me - but somehow it still does - how quickly you can fly to a place you normally drive to; the astounding speed...
Jul 25, 20182 min
Tornado
It fascinates me, how much we speak from our own experience, how our vocabulary and quirky hand-me-down sayings are tied inextricably to...
Jun 26, 20182 min
Frequent Flyer
“Will you be ok Mum? You know, flying without Dad?” I raise my eyebrows at my daughter’s comment before replying in mock indignance, “I...
May 31, 20181 min
What kind of mist...?
Sitting in church one day, my eyes wandered from the passage being read and landed instead on James 4 v 14: “What is your life? You are a...
Mar 29, 20182 min
making brioche
I had always wanted to make brioche. Since my student days, wandering the cobbled side streets of Aix-en-Provence, breathing in buttery...
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