I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame.

There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.

Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

Was I the only woman in the world who, at my age - and after a lifetime of quite rampant independence - still did not quite feel grown up?

Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes.

Death is too much to ask of the living.

I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray.