I collect Victorian automata and coming across them in the dark does give you a little shudder.

Ghost stories ... tell us about things that lie hidden within all of us, and which lurk outside all around us.

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

I collect Victorian automata and coming across them in the dark does give you a little shudder.

A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.

Of all human activities, apart from the procreation of children, gardening is the most optimistic and hopeful. The gardener is by definition one who plans for and believes and trusts in a future, whether in the short or the longer term.

Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.