I am not writing this week.  Instead, I am doing the accounts for our business, a holiday house in Berwick, and it is a tedious task. The bank statements must be matched with receipts, the spouse harassed over missing items, mystery payments tracked down, and then it...

A favourite walk from our house is along the pier to the red-and-white lighthouse, now redundant, that still stands guard over the entrance to the estuary. The pier runs south through the rocks and mudflats below the tideline before turning east alongside the channel...

  One of the joys of living by the sea are the ever-changing views across the estuary. But the severe frost and snow of recent days took change to a new level, to near unrecognisable. The water draining down the cliffs turned into yard-long organ pipes of glittering...

It’s not that I mind winter. No - I love the pale light, the incandescent sunsets over the estuary and the icicles dripping from the gutter on frosty mornings. But it plays havoc with my schedule. I am, irredeemably, a lark. Morning is my bright time, my wide-awake...