The farmer and his wife

IT was about nine o’clock on a Friday night when we heard a vehicle pull up in the yard. You couldn’t miss it. I think it must have had a hole in its exhaust! Jip let the world know we had visitors. T

SHORTLY after we were married, a farmer’s wife from near Lanark rang Anne and asked if I was going to the sheep sales there that year. I was, so she persuaded Anne to come with me and stay the night w

Betty Middleton had only moved in two weeks earlier, but already she was starting to annoy me with her frequent knocks at my back door. “Would you like a slice of my lemon drizzle? It’s home-made!” No

IT was a Wednesday night and we were sitting round the stove trying to get warm. It had been a cold day, the window blowing from Siberia. “John, let’s have someone in on Saturday night.” I had to smil

HELLO, little one!” Penny Dauntless greeted a robin-redbreast, who cocked his head as she pushed along her trolley of post on the daily round. “How often is there such a perfect mid-December morning?”

D inah was not a Christmas cook. Her ...