marriage is an extraordinary thing - and I doubt if any outsider - even a child of the marriage - has the right to judge.

I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling.

Don't think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind.

Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm, but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack - not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She though always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.

Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.

I'm afraid of death... Yes, but that doesn't stop death coming.

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.