When it comes to housework the one thing no book of household management can ever tell you is how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.

As anyone who has ever fallen foul of an airport, a conventional hospital or a bad restaurant knows, misery is made up of little things.

The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.

And what would happen to my illusion that I am a force for order in the home if I wasn't married to the only man north of the Tiber who is even untidier than I am?

Perennials are the ones that grow like weeds, biennials are the ones that die this year instead of next and hardy annuals are the ones that never come up at all.

A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it.

I cannot for the life of me see why the umpires, the only two people on a cricket field who are not going to get grass stains on their knees, are the only two people allowed to wear dark trousers.