When I was a teenager all the cool girls at my school lived in Wimborne. They wore the chicest clothes, shopped at Chelsea Girl in Bournemouth on Saturdays (the height of sophistication) and unlike the rest of us knew enough boys to invite a whole load of them to parties. So it was a bit of a surprise when I moved back to Dorset to find that Wimborne is actually ...keep reading
“Goodnight sweet prince,” muttered my son as our trusty Gaggia coffee maker finally gave up the ghost. He twiddled a few knobs on the machine and the illuminated display declared that the machine had made the grand total of 7,197 cups of coffee in its time. Blimey, I thought, that’s a heck of a lot of coffee. We’d had the machine serviced regularly but the coffee had definitely been getting ...keep reading
Saturday breakfast is my favourite time of the week. The stresses and strains of the previous week recede into the distance and two days of blustery walks, log fires and reading books stretch blissfully ahead. Years ago, when I was on the Sunday Express, I always worked on Saturdays and even though I got Mondays off in lieu it was never quite the same. Worse still, I missed two years ...keep reading