Yesterday’s meditations on gardening reminded me of a book I used to read to Ned and Joy.

‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’ by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen.
Jasper the cat plants a seed. He waters it and tends it, but it doesn’t grow. He gets cross, digs it up and throws it away. But that’s not the end [...]

Avid readers with excellent memories may remember that, in January last year, I sent an early version of the manuscript for ‘How I Said Bah! to cancer’ to Pen 2 Publication, a manuscript assessment service provided by Nicola Morgan, fiction writer and brain expert. Her help was invaluable. (One of the things she wrote in [...]

This is one of those books that languished on my shelves for years before I finally got around to reading it. I bought it because I’d Heard Of It And Ought To Read It, at a time when such things mattered. (OK, they still matter, but not as much as they used to. And no [...]