The Secret Life of Tennis Balls

The Secret Life of Tennis Balls

Ruminating over endless squabbles on social media is making me jittery. Because news stories nowadays mean different things to different people; entrenched viewpoints and shouty disagreements muddy every conversation, and there’s rarely a calm consensus on what is actually true. So I stop reading, put my phone down and go outside. Half a dozen tatty chewed-up tennis balls lie on the wet winter grass littered with twigs blown down by the wind. My silly soft dog Austin walks over to…

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Chamomile, Candles, and a Very Naughty Bunny

Chamomile, Candles, and a Very Naughty Bunny

At the end of The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, the mischievous bunny’s mother, Old Mrs Rabbit, puts him to bed with some chamomile tea. In this timeless children’s story, Peter is forbidden to go into Mr McGregor’s garden – because his father was caught there and put in a pie – but he does it anyway and feasts on radishes, lettuce and beans. Mr McGregor spots Peter and chases him all around the garden. He’s terrified and…

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Botanical Healing at Chelsea Physic Garden

Botanical Healing at Chelsea Physic Garden

Sunflowers helped clean up the soil in Chernobyl by soaking up and storing radioactive particles in their roots and stems, I discovered, as I pottered about reading the labels and smelling the lavender in London’s oldest botanical garden. During August’s respite from lockdown, I longed to go somewhere green and beautiful, to connect with the natural world for a few hours. Chelsea Physic Garden, home to over 5,000 medicinal, useful and endangered plants from around the world, has its historical…

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Stealing a Piece of the Past

Stealing a Piece of the Past

I pulled up the last inch of zip on my hood and looked all around me, peering deep into the wet night to make sure nobody was watching. I had to move fast. In the dark, I snuck behind the metal fence and picked a path through the puddles and debris on the broken driveway. I looked up and what I saw took my breath away – the last few remaining walls of my childhood home, battered and empty as…

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Diana’s Memory Lives on in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens

Diana’s Memory Lives on in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens

The wide path that stretches down the western edge of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens is usually buzzing with tourists and crowds of young Londoners, but this summer it is quiet. Just a distant hum of traffic and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, cyclists whirring quietly by and a trickle of runners and walkers. This is the snazzy side of the park because of its over 300-year-old Royal residence, Kensington Palace, the London home of the Duke…

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Along the Brook to Hambleden Village

Along the Brook to Hambleden Village

The old church smelled like old church – a slight whiff of damp and ancient stone that the fresh air can’t reach because the doors stay closed to keep the jackdaws out. I sat alone in one of the few pews that weren’t blocked off by stacks of kneeling prayer cushions, made of tightly tapestried wool in an assortment of colourful designs. Saint Mary the Virgin Church is huge in comparison to the tiny but charmingly old village of Hambleden,…

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You Can Call Me AL

You Can Call Me AL

What’s in a name? A quick search tells me that my name Alison has been around since Medieval days. It was French probably, or maybe Scottish or English, and it is spelt with two Ls in America. Long ago, it was given to an Alice’s offspring – meaning ‘little Alice’ – and in Brazil it’s given to a boy. Does any of that matter? Not really. What matters is that my Mum and Dad liked the name Alison back in…

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Waiting Patiently to Swim Across the Channel

Waiting Patiently to Swim Across the Channel

I am on the riverbank at Aston, a tiny village near Henley, on a sunny Saturday morning. Surrounded by the green of wild hedgerows and overhanging trees, river reeds and fields on all sides. The Thames flows quietly by, glinting in the still air. Six women in swimsuits have just waded in, waist-deep, talking all at once about the size of their boobs and laughing at each other’s quick-fire tales of bra fails and breastfeeding. Caps and goggles on, they…

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Huge Increase in Food Bank Demand and Donations

Huge Increase in Food Bank Demand and Donations

A Henley food bank has delivered nearly 10 times more food parcels during the coronavirus pandemic than it did a year ago. The food bank is run by the Nomad Food and Community Project – a charity that gives grass-roots support to local children, young people and families facing challenging situations. In the seven weeks from 23 March, Nomad delivered 340 food parcels, up from 36 during the same period in 2019. The parcels comprised 804 bags of food and…

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The Lonely Life of Nina Simone

The Lonely Life of Nina Simone

I step carefully into the deep water and lie down. There’s just the right amount of bubble bath, the lights are off and a red candle flickers in the steamy haze, lighting up the walls. The hot water embraces every bit of me, I’m hugged, my eyes close and I start to relax. I’m listening to I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free by Nina Simone and I decide that this is my lockdown song —…

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Drawing Bella’s Curves

Drawing Bella’s Curves

Whether we are all alone or squashed together, working or not, worried or relaxed, everything has changed because of coronavirus, and this feels deeply unsettling for everyone I know. The death rates are mind-boggling. How will we get out of this? What was true last year is now nonsense, things we now know to be true were unthinkable a few months ago, and nobody has a clue what the world will look like once the virus is under control (if…

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Sleepy Heads and Other Stories

Sleepy Heads and Other Stories

I’ve been putting together a scrapbook of some of the things I wrote about during my first 10 years of motherhood. Maybe one day my kids will read it and get a glimpse of what it was like for me when they were little? Some of these memoirs were published in my magazine, a few were just scribbled in journals, and others were posted on a blog that I was obsessively devoted to and besotted with for a couple of…

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The Desperate Scramble for Views, Visits and Clicks

The Desperate Scramble for Views, Visits and Clicks

The print publishing industry has been turned upside down in recent years, and the turmoil is intensifying. Two decades ago, the internet was only just starting to take off — it was easy to sell print advertising space because it was still an essential component of most businesses’ marketing plans. Since then, there’s been a stampede to get online and everything has changed — how people read, how they look for information, how we all communicate, how businesses promote themselves…

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The Laundry in Three Men in a Boat

The Laundry in Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, first published in 1889, is a classic Victorian novel originally intended to be a Thames travel guide. The author found his comic voice while he was writing, however, and the book evolved into a funny tale of three friends and their dog, Montmorency, on a journey up the river from London to Oxford. One day – having already passed through Henley and Reading, before going for drinks in Wallingford – the…

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Former Lodge of George Harrison’s Neo-Gothic Mansion

Former Lodge of George Harrison’s Neo-Gothic Mansion

It is not uncommon to see Henley’s visitors standing on Gravel Hill at the iron gates of Friar Park, the grand country estate that George Harrison once called home. They dutifully take their selfies before gazing up the winding drive, wondering what lies over the hill, dreaming of The Beatles and the golden age of sixties pop. Friar Park House is a huge and elaborate neo-Gothic mansion surrounded by wooded parkland, originally built in the 1890s as a weekend retreat…

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Bradley For Sale at £2 Million

Bradley For Sale at £2 Million

Lambridge Wood Road is a racehorse amongst ponies. A professional in a crowd of amateurs. A Harrods Café coffee next to a mug of Instant. Discreet and exclusive, this residential road is hidden from view, just off the Fairmile, and curves smoothly towards a large area of woodland bordering the National Trust land of Greys Court. Lambridge Wood Road is broadly exempt from Henley’s burgeoning traffic issues, because it is a quiet no-through road ending abruptly at the edge of…

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My Earliest Years

My Earliest Years

Of course I don’t remember anything about the start of my life, so I went around to my parents’ house to ask them about it. We sat on the green sofa in the living room of their bungalow and looked through some of my old baby photos, chuckling at my chubby round face and thick dark hair, and how I was dressed from head to toe in hand-knitted baby clothes. I was born on a cold winter’s night in Hitchin,…

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General Eisenhower’s Secret WW2 Hideaway

General Eisenhower’s Secret WW2 Hideaway

It is 1944 and mainland Europe is on its knees, ravaged by years of Nazi occupation and desperately waiting for liberation. Large numbers of American military personnel are over here, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our British soldiers ready for battle, holed up in the woods as they await the orders that will send them to fight on the beaches of Normandy. Living and working unnoticed in a top-secret location – an Edwardian townhouse in a small Berkshire village – is the…

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A Well-Heeled But Unflashy Neighbourhood

A Well-Heeled But Unflashy Neighbourhood

“It is the place to live,” I hear. “It is the most desirable road in Henley,” they say. Well I don’t know about that, but Rotherfield Road definitely has a lot going for it. It is a no-through road for starters – so there are no passing cars and it is as quiet as falling snow – and yet all the hubbub and happenings in the centre of Henley are still within walking distance. Woodside is a six-bedroom house that…

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Treasures of the British Library

Treasures of the British Library

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Every book published in the UK and Ireland is deposited, catalogued and archived by the British Library at St Pancras in London. So, having just self-published my own book, I decided to go there and have a look around. The British Library receives around three million new books every year, along with a huge number of newspapers, maps, scripts, databases, music recordings, drawings, films, digital content, magazines, and all sorts of other tasty fruits picked from our fast-growing cultural and…

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