February in West Sussex is a bleak little month, and nobody pretends otherwise. The trees are still bare. The sky sits about three feet above your head. The pavements are wet in a way that seeps into your socks regardless of what you’ve spent on boots. It’s the month where you realise the novelty of the London winter wore off approximately six weeks ago and you’ve still got a solid chunk of it to go. So I did what any reasonable person does when the weather is unrelenting, th

We landed at Heathrow on a Tuesday morning in late August, and Richard was in a cab to the City before I'd properly found my feet on English soil. I stood there with two suitcases, a hand luggage bag, and a thirteen-year-old who was looking at England with the careful, guarded expression of someone who has been told this is going to be wonderful and is reserving judgement. She was born in Auckland. She has never lived anywhere else. England, to Gemma, is a place her parents a