Bears being sent through the mail should never be squashed up to make them fit. It gives them indigestion.

It's hard to visualize the toys you had fifty years ago - all save bear. He's as clear as if he were sitting on the desk in front of you...of course...he probably is.

However time or circumstances may come between mother and her child, their lives are interwoven forever.

Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not — self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives.

Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet.

Music speaks of Platonic truth - the ideal river rather than the polluted reality, love as we dream it rather than we experience it, grief noble and uplifting rather than our distracted weeping. It is necessary to our survival and our sanity.

A younger sister is someone to use as a guinea-pig in trying sledges and experimental go-carts. Someone to send on messages to Mum. But someone who needs you - who comes to you with bumped heads, grazed knees, tales of persecution. Someone who trusts you to defend her. Someone who thinks you know the answers to almost everything.