Today, I’m turning off anything with a voice or lyrics. If it was summer, I might be able to hear the distant buzz of insects, but for now, on a January Monday, I’m simply going to sit with my thoughts for a while. There’s traffic outside, a little bit of birdsong and a ticking Ikea…

Tomorrow is the fabled ‘Blue Monday’ where, if the media is to be believed, we are all in it together. The whole nation is allowed to bandy around the term ‘depression’ as if a temporary trough in our finances and thus access denied to our Gadarene consumer stampede equates to an illness that sucks every…

Yesterday, eldest daughter and I headed up into hills and high moorland for a much-needed walk. It was cold enough to require full winter hillwalking kit, plus ( on my partner’s insistence) I carried a bivvy-bag, just in case one of us fell down and broke something and the other one had to go for…

 This is one of the pictures that didn’t make it into the final book. in fact, I don’t even think I offered it to my publishers, preferring to keep it to myself. You can see the rough pencil marks and un-rubbed out bits, but there’s something very child-like about the dragon – his pelican bib…

Today is what is sometimes referred to as a book birthday. Being the mother of five children, I prefer to imagine it as the day a book is born. Being the book’s mumma, today I should be sitting up in bed or perching carefully on a bag of frozen peas ( too much information?) or…