I like being old. At nearly 80, I think I am allowed to say so. Indeed, I like being old so much that I wrote a book about it. But that doesn’t mean that everything about being old is wonderful. Far from it. And one of the things I like least is the loss of friends…

One of the great joys of having grandchildren is the opportunity to relive the pleasures of childhood. We love to get on the floor and play with their toy trains or construct houses from plastic blocks of one kind or another…

Something made me think about ambition recently. Did I feel it was a good or bad thing in people, especially my friends? The answer is complicated. On initial thinking, I tended to feel that ambition, when not taken to extremes, is a good thing…

Finally, you have reached the age when you are beginning to think about downsizing. Perhaps you have familiarized yourself with all the practical and even emotional difficulties involved and have decided you are not quite ready to take the plunge?

It began as a sort of shadow at the corner of my eye, while I was watching the television. Something seemed to have moved, but I couldn’t work out what. Perhaps it was just a figment of my imagination. But the second time, there was no mistaking it…

Do you remember the terrible AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s? Were you directly affected by it? We are all old enough to remember. But for some, it may have passed by as an awful situation that happened to other people…

It was an ordinary Thursday evening just after 7 p.m. And, as on every Thursday evening at that time, my choir was warming up for its two-hour rehearsal to come. All eyes were on the conductor, including mine. But one of the tenors was very slightly late and was just coming into the room. A […]

Actually, that’s not quite true. I dislike almost all presents, whatever the time of year. I don’t much like giving them, and I certainly don’t like getting them. It has been ever thus. It is wonderful to give presents to children. You generally know from their parents…

So, you have become a grandmother! Congratulations! How are you feeling about it? Excited? Apprehensive? Not ready to see yourself as a grandma? Join the club. Many of us feel that way at first. Just after my second grandson was born, I decided to write…

We don’t think about it much, but we go through our daily lives with a huge range of assumptions about what is going on around us. At least I do. And I expect you do, too. You’re in the supermarket and a mother is yelling at a little boy…