Children are a joy to portray in oil on canvas… please note that I didn’t say “to paint”, as someone would be bound to interrupt with whoops of derisive laughter! Not all the little people who have sat for me have done so willingly; anxious parents’ warning about sitting still and being quiet for the three hour session, never help! A two-year-old… Read More

On what started off as a fairly normal day, there is nothing like being pushed unceremoniously into an ambulance and spending twenty-six hours in an Emergency ward attached to an incredible number of needles, wires, drips and a blood-pressure machine, to make one appreciate being back at work! Work, for me, is sitting at the computer doing anything other than writing my… Read More

After hearing so much about the congestion at the Channel Tunnel and Ferries, we were expecting difficulties in getting to England but, in the event, our crossing was one of the best ever. We went from Dunkirk and everything was so well organised that it felt like part of the holiday. Fearing that it might be crowded we had booked… Read More

A more recent occasion when I neglected to grab a camera, was a couple of weeks ago while driving on (I think) the M6, to visit friends in the north of England. We were in the fast lane of four, when traffic came to a crawl. In the distance we could see smoke and, as we moved nearer, the smoke… Read More

I couldn’t help reflecting on other long road trips. Most went smoothly but one in particular was unforgettable. In 1963, while living in Singapore, my husband decided that we should have a week in Penang. If memory serves me right it was 132 miles away and he drove with only a couple of short breaks in eleven-and-three-quarter-hours, mostly through secondary… Read More

I have never understood why autobiographies start at the beginning. Unless you know me, the terribly amusing anecdotes of my life as a tiny tot are unlikely to enthrall. When you get to know me as I am now, you may then be interested in discovering the process that went into making those eighty-four years stimulating enough for me to still be… Read More

Juggling the demands of everyday life with the urgency to finish writing the current book is difficult at the best of times, but the summer heat here in Spain has not helped! As you can guess, if you have read of my own experiences, ideas are not much of a problem and, in the beginning, I wrote so much without worrying… Read More