This is my 85-year-old mother talking to Garry who runs the booze section at her local supermarket. Mum buys all her beer and chardonnay...

‘That’s a bloody nuff, Diane. Stop taking photos!’ My mother can shoehorn a swearword into almost anything she says.

September 16, 2018 I arrived in New Zealand yesterday and got to my 85-year-old mother’s place at about 8:30 in the evening. Mum hadn’t...

September 5, 2018 Recently, I was asked to name seven books that meant something to me as a child. This would be virtually impossible for...

August 5, 2018 My mother used to drive a boxy Peugeot 404. It had a stick shift on the steering column with indicators on the French side...

August 4, 2018 When I was growing up in New Zealand, golf was not an expensive or elite sport. My mother played it and was an excellent...

May 19, 2018 Today we followed a ‘Yard Sale’ sign to a front garden filled with old tat. The owner, a man in his seventies, lifted the...

March 25, 2018 My dentist just told me that I have the gums of an 18-year-old. Apparently, they’re very tight against the teeth. I walked...

March 11, 2018 A conversation from three years ago: My then 82-year-old mother was talking to her then 83-year-old sister called Joy....

February 23, 2018 Bloody H3N2. Your head hurts. It feels as if your brain has swollen and is rubbing against the inside of your skull....

January 19, 2018 My mother visited her local clinic yesterday. While she was having a blood test, the nurse casually asked her how old...

December 11, 2017 I woke up in the middle of the night with a very clear awareness of death. It was not frightening. It was an...

November 26, 2017 Last night I was entering a side door to a party in a bar above a pub when someone said loudly, ‘She’s a homophobic...

November 10, 2017 The footpaths are quite wide on the boulevards in Paris. I was hurrying along one of these on Wednesday when I noticed...

October 10, 2017 I am getting a new laptop today. A souped-up MacBook Pro. Bells and whistles. Adaptors and software galore. It’s the...

October 8, 2017 A couple of weeks ago I was waiting for a Tube at Kentish Town Station with my brother and nephew. We were standing at...

September 25, 2017 My middle brother used to have a friend called Colin. I knew him as a teenager. He was an odd, furtive boy who walked...

September 24, 2017 On the train from Scotland to London yesterday, we had a table next to a young, blond American man. He was 18 and was...

August 30, 2107 Many years ago, I met a woman who described herself as a novelist. ‘I’m a literary writer,’ she told me, setting herself...

August 13, 2017 Yesterday while walking up the hill from St Albans station quietly resenting everyone walking down the hill, I passed a...