You know how it goes: which 8 gramophone (they don’t actually still use that wonderfully archaic word, I don’t think, but it used to be there) records would you take to your desert island?  And lately, there’s been a variation  on the theme of a well-known (ostensibly …) person being invited to name the 8 pieces of music to take to their island with the choices of the ordinary public experiencing our current lockdown/crisis/whichever word you choose to use for the place we have been in since mid-March – being discussed, chosen and played. Which has led me to think of...

One of my favourite writers is Anne Tyler. She is someone who seems to make writing look effortless and easy – which, of course, shows what a great writer she is. To write simply, accessibly, and yet still  convey depth of character and emotion and say all you want to say – well, it’s very, very far from easy. In fact, it’s the most difficult thing in the world to do Rather like the best of actors who don’t appear to be acting at all, but simply are their character. Or dancers for whom steps and sequences seem to flow...

As every upstanding, respectable and notably patriarchal male of Victorian times knew, the popular image of the angel in the house was not just an image, but mandatory.  His wife had to aspire and fulfil the demands  of being passive, powerless, pious and pure.  At the same time, she was also expected to be charming, graceful and sympathetic without fail. At all times. No challenge there, then. This meek model of perfection was celebrated in Coventry Patmore’s poem of the same name written and widely admired in the 19th century and rightly attacked by Virginia Woolf in 1931 when she...

It has to say something about a nation’s priorities – observing what is first released out of lockdown. And I am sure that I am not the only read-aholic to notice that one of Italy’s first actions was to allow bookshops to open.  How wise and entirely appropriate! Switzerland has approved beauty salons and flower shops and are following up next month with secondary schools, libraries, museums and zoos. In Greece, hairdressers and small shops appear to have been among the early returners whereas in England we have been led to understand that our hair will languish lengthily until well...

Admittedly, as a writer, I tend to be a bit fussy about words. Some people might even call me obsessive. Few things annoy me more, for example, than that constant misuse of the word ‘literally’ – as in my heart was literally in my mouth or I was literally knocked over with surprise.  So it’s no wonder that this phrase, LOCK DOWN, is beginning to irritate me profoundly. Literally, in this case. Because vast swathes of the population are not actually in any kind of literal confinement that the word implies.  Prison inmates are locked up. Most of us are, literally, actually,...

Birthdays in lockdown – the latest of curious experiences in these most curious of times. And not my own. If I have to spend my birthday still in lockdown the world will be in a very grave situation since it’s not until that remotest of months, December. And if we have to be grateful for anything at the moment (apart from the fact of hopefully not falling ill – naturally – and the NHS, key workers et al )it’s that we are experiencing all this in late spring and early summer rather than in the darkest of dark times of...

My microwave needs cleaning. My writing files are chaotic. My desk drawers are a mess. My enormous under stairs cupboard is possibly home to some rare creatures and cultures and curious hybrid beings since it’s impossible to penetrate the layers of coats and jackets and scarves that lie prostrate within it – let alone the packing case that still resides in there from when we moved in – over 11 years ago. And I’ve been telling myself endlessly that one day, when I have time, I will sort all of the above. And more. One day when granted a quiet...

When I was growing up, my least favourite days of the week were Wednesdays and Sundays. Most people of a certain age will recognise the features of a suburban Sunday in the 1960s and even into the 1970s. Shops were all closed, apart from the odd newsagent/sweet shop where you could go for sweets after Sunday School – a few penny chews, a tube of refreshers, some sherbet lemons, perhaps. Sundays were Two Way Family Favourites on the radio while the smell of roasting meat and potatoes filled the house. Later, if you were lucky, there was a BBC serial to watch...

Everyone knows those cliché phrases: live everyday like there is no tomorrow / live in the moment / live today and let tomorrow look after itself and other such pointless offerings that are entirely irrelevant to the way most people have to live their lives. Choose and want to live their lives. After all, tomorrow and the next day and the next – let alone the following weekend, the subsequent month are, in the normal way of things, often so much richer than the present moment. We live with diaries and calendars – on the wall, on our phones, our...