We arrived in the dark, our headlights sweeping around the corners of the single-track lane as we drove and illuminating fringes of fields and hedgerows that suggested vast open spaces further beyond.
Snow and ice crackled beneath the tyres. In front, suddenly: a white-faced owl, which rotated its neck magisterially at our approach then slowly flapped up and over us. A little further along a muntjac deer high-stepped cautiously across the road, its retina reflecting night-vision green in the beams of our car.
We had left London three hours ago. In the back seat baby Betty was entertaining herself by playing hide and seek. “One, two, three, comingreadyornot!” she shouted, snugly strapped in to her child seat. “Boo MummyDaddy!” She bubbled with laughter then gently subsided, turning her face up to her window to gaze at the thousands of stars above. No sodium street-lights here. My baby daughter, more used to pointing at the trains that pass along the bottom of our garden, was entranced by the massive constellations over her head.
Tired, broke and frazzled by the constant juggling of work and family, my husband and I had called time on our responsibilities. With our eldest children weekending elsewhere we had thrown two small bags of food and clothes into the car, hoisted Betty aloft and run from our terraced house to a tiny countryside bolthole.
Which we had just found, tucked away in the dark where we might never have seen it but for a friendly Read more…
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Q: Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
A: I live in London, with my husband, two daughters and two step-sons and I think, for a change, I’ll be here for a while. Working as a journalist for an international news agency has meant travelling a lot: I lived for several years in Paris and in Washington DC and flew to cover stories in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. My family need stability for now. But I may get itchy feet again at some point in the future…
Q: What language(s) do you speak? Read more…
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There’s one day every year to which Grace counts down with unparalleled shiny-eyed fervour. It’s not Christmas, or her birthday, or the start of the summer holidays, though of course all of these are also proceeded by repeated questioning, date-checking and suppressed thrills.
Her anticipation of this year’s event started precisely one day after last year’s event. On that day Grace drifted dreamily past me, trailing her fingers along the furniture, her mind turning on internal images of the night before. I asked her if she was alright: she barely heard me.
When I went upstairs later to monitor her progress towards bed, I found her at the sink in the bathroom, gazing into the mirror at herself, her tortoiseshell eyes lit with the amber light of her imaginings. As I entered the room she turned to me and said, as though continuing a conversation started much earlier: “… so then, Mummy, next year I can be – .” Read more…
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We arrived in the dark, our headlights sweeping around the corners of the single-track lane as we drove and illuminating fringes of fields and hedgerows that suggested vast open spaces further beyond.
