This morning my trio had a Coffee Concert at the Wigmore Hall. It meant being in central London at 9am for our rehearsal, so  last night I went to bed quite early, in the hope of being well rested. But this strategy rarely works, and as well as sleeping badly, I had one of my […]

Bob and I stopped work a bit early and drove to Richmond Park to walk in the Isabella Plantation, a large enclosed garden within the park. The first time I ever saw the Isabella Plantation in springtime, someone had tipped me off that I shouldn’t miss the sight of it with the azaleas in full […]

The BBC’s poetry season included a sweet programme last night about Wordsworth’s poem ‘Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’. Presenter and poet Owen Sheers shared his lovely insight that the poem has become more, not less resonant over the years. The surprise of finding oneself on the bridge with the sudden sense of air, light, space […]

A few days ago I wrote about our cat dragging her water bowl around the kitchen floor. It’s a topic I never thought I would mention again. However, last night when we were giving the cat a bit of supper, we suddenly noticed that her pottery drinking bowl had gone. It was simply not there. […]

Our tortoiseshell cat Tashi, now nearly 14 years old, has taken to dragging her water bowl around on the wooden floor of the kitchen. From a nearby room we’d occasionally hear a strange, effortful scraping sound from the direction of the kitchen, as though a small convict were moving about in chains. We’d investigate and […]