I recently started a blog and wrote a book with the somewhat less than beautiful title It Is Just You, Everything's Not Shit but lots of beautiful things have happened as a result. Here are three of them:
1. Meeting Oliver Postgate, the creator of Bagpuss, Clangers and Ivor the Engine. Still going strong in his eighties, he was one hero that did not disappoint in the flesh.
2. Receiving a wooden chest of sweets from the lovely people at ww.aquarterof.com. It was like opening a gateway to my childhood - flying saucers, sherbet pips, space dust and bucketloads more.
3. Hearing from lost friends who have stumbled across the book in shops and emailed me. Some very welcome blasts from the past.
The book is available from Waterstones and Amazon or from It Is Just You, Everything's Not Shit.
1. Sitting in bed with Nick and the Sunday papers.
2. Finding a secret garden and imagining that it was there solely for our benefit. It is arranged in concentric circles around a pond where sedges have dipped into the water, forming hoops with their reflections.
3. As we go over Ashdown Forest, the taxi driver says that if he has to wait around, he sometimes comes up here with a flask of coffee and a sandwich.
