I’M ON my way back to London from Suffolk with two old nursing friends.

IT’S 8am. I open my eyes to find a pair of perky brown irises staring into mine, a couple of inches from my own.

ON THE train, Somerset — and I’m heading down to my mother-in-law Anne, a widow of remarkable warmth, generosity and fixed opinions.

THURSDAY night and my husband and I are in bed. We’re both wearing reading spectacles for the first time.

IF YOU can say “pass the marmalade” in HTML, please feel free to turn over the page.

A PUBLISHED author — I forget who — once said that in order to write as honestly and naturally as he could he rinsed any thoughts of his readers out of his head by imagining them as a bunch of “orangutans, turning the pages with their feet”.

IT IS Saturday afternoon. I join my husband and a small group of friends who have gathered around a café table in town.

I’VE joined a gym. Though I can’t even explain to myself how strange a turn of events this is, I’m trying to explain it to my mother.

HOME from Greece. The normal rules of life, suspended for a fortnight, reinstate themselves.

IHAVE an idea for a book! I have to admit it owes an awful lot to Where’s Wally?, the series of children’s books created by British illustrator Martin Handford, but let’s put that aside for a minute, while I flesh my idea out for you.