M&s

The sound of the little cart on the lane came first and then the sight of the pony clip-clopping towards our gate. An old woman, as old as the hills, was sitting atop the cart jiggling the reins as she jogged the pony expertly down the road. An old woman, as old as the hills, was sitting atop the cart jiggling the reins as she jogged the pony down the road We waved her down to say hello, because we are always so delighted to see people with horses that we often run out to talk to them. On this occasion, as the weather-beaten old woman in scruffy clothes pulled

‘Where’s the eye hospital?’ shouted pretty much everyone standing outside a building signposted eye hospital in Irish. ‘An tAonad Oftailmeolaiochta’ read the sign on the brand new building and then in much smaller letters underneath ‘Opthalmology’, which is one of those English words that twists the tongue and isn’t much easier. Good for the Irish, I say, because even though I don’t speak it, I respect the fact they are trying to preserve their own language and identity. In any case, let’s say I did mind, what has it to do with me? I’ve only just got here. There is a funny sort of person who goes to live abroad

My one finished bathroom featured a sink so small I could only wash one hand in it at a time, as water spilled over the edge. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed, while I stood in the newly installed en suite to the main bedroom, which had somehow got smaller since it was renovated while I was away on a trip. ‘The shower’s amazing,’ said the builder boyfriend nervously, turning the lever to let out an impressive jet of scalding hot water. The new system, with its swanky DeJong cylinder hooked up to two giant water tanks in an outhouse connected to a high-tech pump to drive water around the big

A letter from Archie Norman, chairman of M&S, popped into my inbox after I complained that I had run over my foot with a changing room door. It wasn’t a personal letter, rather a generic response, and this was a relief because I would not have liked the actual Archie Norman to have actually seen the complaint email I sent with a close-up picture of my bruised black, grazed and manky-looking foot. When you complain to a chain store about their weirdly heavy and not-quite-coming-all-the-way-to-the-floor changing room doors, the last thing you want, really, is a reply from someone you once had lunch with when you were suited and booted