Theresa’s Writing

All of us have at some point told a lie. Lies vary in degrees of awfulness from the truly despicable ( cheating on  your partner or  the Donald Trump variety), the inevitable ( saying you really like someone’s new boyfriend when in fact you think he is awful), and the pointless ( like lying about…

Our Japanese friends thought of Tim as the ultimate English gentleman. This was basically because he was very tall, went to Cambridge, spoke perfect Japanese, but most of all because he had worked at Harrods. He had in fact worked there for a short time as a summer job and used to sit in a…

Once we had managed to escape from the clutches of British Embassy life we went to look at a house to rent in a suburb of Tokyo called Nakano. The interview with the current tenant who was wishing to sublet the property to us was quite interesting to say the least. He was a Frenchman…

When I was driving  through the Arizona desert on my own,  I was desperate for something to listen to other than the local radio (which seemed to be either country and western or fire and brimstone religion) ,  so I stopped at a petrol station in the hopes of finding some cd’s. Though I did…

I first encountered dog man ( or Dennis Noble to use his real name) in around 1980.  We were sent out from college with our sketchbooks and I found myself sitting on a damp bench in St Giles’s churchyard  drawing lichen covered tombstones.  I realised somebody was watching me and when I looked I up…

It was inevitable that sooner or later I would write an article about my chickens. How I love them, with their cheeky beaky faces and the way they  race towards me when I go  to feed them with that ridiculous John Wayne cartoon waddle.  I have kept chickens for about six years now,  having been…

When I went out this morning to feed my chickens I heard  a woodpigeon  in the lime tree at the end of the garden. This sound always reminds me of Gypsy Furlong, the house where my grandparents,  and where we, for a brief time lived.  Gypsy Furlong smelt of damp newspapers and woodsmoke, of beeswax…

Yesterday I drove back into London from West Sussex in what can only be described as a foggy whiteout. It was like sitting  in the car with all the windows and windscreen being covered in cotton wool , and a game of chance as to whether or not any of us would make it through…

What an extraordinary couple of days,  when it seems that the whole world has gone mad, but as is often the way, the worst of humanity also brings out the best, so that when you are on the point of giving up and walking into the sunset something happens to make you think actually it’s…

Nothing is what it seems in the strange world of internet dating. It’s the ultimate fantasy land  where,  if you choose to do so, you can  be whoever you  want, say whatever you want , and can create a whole new personality. Bizarrely,  a lot of people even bother to  lie about their ages on…