A dog called daffodil

YOU won’t make it ring by looking at it every two minutes, you know.” My sister Joy has a habit of stating the obvious. I put my phone down and start drumming my fingers on the kitchen table; somethin

After suffering unimaginable loss, some feathery friends helped me to heal.

When I was a child, we had a tortoise called Winnie who had belonged to my father when he was a boy in the 1950s. He called his pet Winston after Churchill, but this name had to be changed when he dis

When Jonty and I agreed (for once, we agreed!) to split up, after many years together, it took a lot of negotiating to decide who kept what. Neither of us could afford to buy out the other from what h

THERE’S a nice new girl working at the Post Office,” I said casually, as I unpacked my shopping on to the kitchen table. “Oh?” my daughter Debra answered, without looking up from her book. “Yes,” I co

THERE could be no doubt about it – Julie was a handful. Brought up by her grandparents when her wayward mother took off, Julie seemed to have spent her young life on a mission to prove that she was no