It's been a year and a bit since the last post, which was not the plan. I sat down to write something in the spring and then again in the summer and both times got about three paragraphs in and thought, this needs more space than I've got this evening, and then didn't come back to it. So: here's the whole thing, the day before Christmas Eve, a glass of something decent at my elbow, the house quiet because Gemma is upstairs packing for Bansko in a manner that can only be descr

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