Today was washing on the line and the chance of rain and houndstooth skirts and crunchy apples and curling up on the grass beneath the Jacaranda tree in a small pile of blankets to read.

I have a secret love for Spiderwick. It reminds me to look for Stray Sods on our lawn and inspect patches of red clover and leave a little warm milk with honey and bread in the old shell at the bottom of the garden.

Meg, wearing mackintosh boots and a red mackintosh, and with a red sou’wester tied beneath her chin, splashed down the drive, and under dripping oak-trees, in a state of happiness deeper and more perfect than any other she was likely to know while she lived in this world. Elizabeth Goudge

I need a new pair of mackintosh boots (we call them Wellingtons) for puddle jumping. However I have two old books and a jar with a cork lid in which I am going to plant a fairy garden to keep on my mantlepiece.

I like reading in the bath, its not a good idea really but its oh-so comfortable and otherwise I fall asleep and I’m slightly afraid of drowning. Picture books are best, you can only get through a few chapters of a novel before the water starts to get cold and your fingers and toes shrivel like prunes. My skin is so pink afterwards, with a rosey glow like a baby.

This is my Bible. Whenever I am feeling sad or lost or lonely I open it up to a page, any page, and read the first paragraph my eyes fall upon. Within I find some solace or beauty or truth that I had forgotton. Today I read this;

Effortlessly proud, graceful as giraffes (even the tallest among them, a kind-eyed Blunderbore), the bowmen moved across the clearing. Last, hand in hand, came a man and a woman. Their faces were as beautiful as if they had never known fear. The woman’s heavy hair shone with a secret, like a cloud that hides the moon.

My Bible was written by a Man, but that gives me a chance to hope that someday, I too, could create something that speaks to the heart within.