Most mornings he roasted lamb, turning it on a spit, where it spattered and dripped […]

We heard snifflings and a cough from behind the hedge.

When she was pregnant with her second child they ran away to France and played at being artists in a secluded mas near Avignon – two months of bliss.

As the 1857 to Manchester Piccadilly rolls in, I scan the windows and realise there are plenty of spare seats, so I hop aboard. The train is a '221'+'220' combo to allow for social distancing - a luxury on an XC train as normally you're playing sardines, so I make the most of it.