There it sat, on my grandmother’s shelf, an unattainable vision of a girl I could never be. But in time its powers waned

One of the problems of retiring is what to do with one’s time; this job gets me out of the house and brings me into daily contact with issues that matter

This was the sludge-brown garment that absolutely no one wanted. But later I realised that the uncle who chose it for a self-centred young man had been right all along

A childhood present from my parents evoked the war they had lived through and foreshadowed the day I would lose them both