it is perfectly possible to converse with any cat, from prize-winning Siamese to alley tabby. Humans who are slow learners may start with a highly articulate Siamese and progress in time to the more sensitive and difficult business of talking to scared strays. Other people, naturally gifted, can talk to any cat right away.

Suffolk has something more than the coziness of Kent and Surrey. There is a hint of wildness in its tamed beauty, and the tang of the North Sea is never far away.

Some brave chrysanthemums still stood in the country gardens, but they looked like bedraggled survivors of a battle, barely able to hold their tattered banners upright. October was at the gates and autumn was in full retreat.

Brutality is sometimes easier to endure than ridicule.

The buildings ... had suffered the inevitable shrinkage of places revisited.

Angry and frustrated, the journalists set about making bricks without straw.

I can never pass a cat in the street without greeting it and exchanging a few words, and the cat invariably replies.