Job? Cat, social media star, fund-raiser; some call me king of Ruddington. How did you get to your current position? I walked, slowly, tail up, with amazing grace and poise. As I always do. Who or what is important to you? The quality of the food offered to me. And a...

Someone said something in a shop the other day that reminded me instantly of my mother. It was rather shocking. I knew Mum was ensconced in her living room watching tennis on TV. More disconcertingly, the voice I heard – doing a pitch-perfect impression – was my own....

When you live in a place, and can get out into it on foot especially, you can really get to know it and love it. If you’re lucky and there’s precious green space, you can even feel it doing you good. So you’re bound to get defensive when it’s under attack. In recent...

I am lucky. I have gone through most of my life with an energetic and fun mum and dad. They kept me and my siblings warm, clothed and fed, but also kept themselves busy with interests and friends. They climbed into Jumbo jets to go on holiday when that was a new...

The recent vandalism at Ruddington’s Great Central Railway, Nottingham, seems to me particularly cruel and mean-spirited. The heritage centre, run entirely by volunteers, had 112 windows of its old rolling stock smashed, with the damage estimated at £80,000. I know...

I hadn’t actually ended the call to my insurers when the ‘follow-up’ customer services email dropped into my inbox: ‘How did we do today?’ My call to them was the annual last-minute admission that, no, I hadn’t found a better deal for my car because, yes, I’d again...

I spotted her out of the corner of my eye – our garden ghost. No, really. I have seen and sensed her countless times. My husband and I accepted soon after we moved into our Ruddington home in Nottingham, 20 years ago this spring, that we would be sharing our space...

“The mice only come out at night so you’ll probably never see one,” she told me. “But don’t keep your handbag on the floor. Here’s some wipes,” As I took my new colleague’s advice and sloughed down my new work area for the week, I found myself musing again on the...

The flatlands of Lincolnshire lend themselves to wonderful skies – and @LincsSkies is there to record them.I thought I was going to write about how horrible social media is, and how tired I am of the nasty, cruel and cynical comments I’m letting into my life.Pretty...