What struck me most were the words you wrote about loneliness, that you can be amongst a group of people, take part in all the activities available, spend all your time in conversations, gossip, laughter, and still feel lonely despite it all. The knowledge that most if not all of these people are going to…

I wish there was something childlike – whether it be for nature and art as you write, or for other things in our modern world – about many of the younger adults, teenagers and even children that I come across in my daily wanderings. The world seems to have become a place where everything has…

Looking back, I think that the worst time of my life, and it covers many years, was mail call. Not so much because everyone else seemed to get post when I didn’t, but more because it was expected that we be there, and I knew I was going to get nothing. The only person who…

It’s supposedly a well known fact that most accidents occur in the home – or what one might call the home environment since I am sure we can agree, Polunsky is not home in the usual sense of the word – and the home is often the most dangerous place in the world, since we…

So I had to wait a few extra days for your letter which is fine; the wait was worthwhile even if the sending of your letter was slightly frustrating for you. I can see where the problem with the stamps comes in to play, the rules and costs are slightly different to those for domestic…

I was pleasantly surprised by the memories your letter managed to conjure in my mind, ones which had slipped through the net completely but which now, after many years, bring back images of my youth. You write about the pleasures of riding your bicycle, and the lessons it taught you on relationships and work ethic:…

There are so many quotations I could use about a house not being a home without books, about how important literature and the access to books has been to one or another person of note, or fame, spanning countless years. Man has appreciated the written or illustrated thought since the first drawings appeared on cave…

I think I have just come across the second person, in my long life, who has taken a course on how to make friends or how to start a conversation through small talk. The first time was back in the Nineties when I was in England visiting an anniversary celebration in Manchester: fifty years of…

I am lucky enough to live in such a small town where it isn’t considered necessary to have the street lights on throughout the night, where people are not afraid to go out at night and where there are no areas, not even next to the paper factory, where you cannot see the sky and…

I’ve had my suspicions for quite a while, but it is something almost impossible to prove unless I take a deckchair and place myself, cup of coffee in the one hand and a book in the other, directly in front of my house and watch what happens. The theory is that our small post box,…