I hardly ever suffer from colds, which I attribute to all that bracing daily dog-walking, but now I've had two in a month. Perhaps the first one never really went away and has been waiting in the wings for an encore. Yesterday I was fine. This morning I woke up streaming . . . The Builder says i...

The Grumpy Neighbour Who Hates My Trees, a deeply unpleasant woman - and, goodness, there are rather too many of them  in this village - was round again today being her usual shouty, bombastic self. The tree surgeon had not turned up at the appointed hour yesterday (oh well, this is Devon afte...

"That used to be our slum. . . " It was time for another outing of the film society (membership two: my dear friend, the Only Other Blonde in the Village, and me) - Slumdog Millionaire was coming to town. (That's as in our nearest town, eight miles away.)  We try to support the t...

One of the best things about dogs is that no matter how sad you may be feeling, you still have to get up, get out and go walking with them. And, as it was my daughter's last day before she resumes her current peripatetic and triangular existence, shuttling between a city centre apartment, her ho...

The Rough Diamond For those of you who have been following the story, the Rough Diamond took his last journey this afternoon, when his favourite vet came out to the house. He went, just as Black Stripe One had done a few weeks ago, in his own special spot in the sitting room, surrounded by those who...

Like many people, I dreamed of one day living in an old house in the country. Plenty of space, where I could wander from room to room, and enough land for the animals to run free. Well, I've been living the dream for more than a decade and there's still much that I love about my home. But .....

Like many book lovers, I groan inwardly each time one of the works of Jane Austen or some other literary giant is subjected to that jolly publishing wheeze, the sequel (written by someone else a century or more later). Why are the original works not enough? Do publishers think that we are so lacking...

I hope you've all been having a happy time over the past week, although most people I know have coughed, spluttered or wheezed their way through the festivities. What with one thing and another, you might have missed a few BBC radio gems over the holiday season, not least because one of the best...

So, everyone is tightening their belts this Christmas although - all things being relative - life could be very, very much worse, as it is for far too many people on this planet right now. But in England, in 2008, there are distinct parallels with what people were experiencing three hundred years ag...

Dan Clarke and John Howell I was fifteen when my family left London and I was very unforgiving about the move. I was a teenager; it was the 1960s; London was the centre of the universe. Enough said. In fact, it wasn't simply leaving London, nor even leaving our Art Deco house - all sunburst gate...