Dear Reader

Dear Reader, Today I saw one of my closest friends, I call her my sister because except for the whole, different parents, no blood relation thing, we're sisters. We grew up together, we wore matching outfits, we went on holidays together and we definitely fought like sisters. So here we are 20 something years later, sisters. We've got to that stage that I feel most sisters reach eventually where you stop arguing so much. I don't know when it happened or how it happened but we just stopped. We stopped annoying one another quite as much and embraced each others faults a little more. It's nice, you know, you suddenly become even closer than you were before. So one of my favourite things about my sister is her ability to forget things, it's fantastic and it makes me laugh so hard I cry sometimes. It's silly things like forgetting the names of objects or people and it makes her who she is, it's ruddy wonderful. I might love it a little more because I always ...

Dear Reader, Grandparents are such wonderful things, of which I don’t truly believe we appreciate until they aren’t sitting in their chair by the fire anymore. I loved my grandparents, as we all do, as a child. They were the people that gave big snuggly cuddles, spent lots of money on you and fed you until you were about to pop. Those are the things you loved and those are the things you remember. But the things I believe we truly miss when they’re gone are the bits you don’t really remember. One of my grandfathers was in the Navy and he used to tell these really long winded, possibly slightly embroidered stories. It was very Uncle Albert-esque and at the time, I wasn’t particularly bothered, I would listen and be polite but I can’t remember any of them now. I laugh and make jokes about how long and silly his stories were but in my heart I miss them with a deep sadness. I wish he were here to tell his tales to me now that I can appreciate and understand them, so I can write ...

Dear Reader, Yesterday I found myself looking up at the building that my mother used to live in with her parents and brother. I stood, my eyes drinking in the old red bricks, the huge windows and the stairs which I could see through the window in the front door. I had heard about this stairs from stories from my mother. My grandfather was a butcher, the building was his shop Read & Co. and the stairs lead up to the house. At Christmas, when overrun with orders they would have to stack the turkeys up the stairs with little name tags on them. When the customer arrived to pick up their turkey my mother and her brother would have to run up and down the stairs trying to find the right customers name on tens of turkeys. The thought of it always made me laugh. I wasn't sure what I was meant to feel, I had never been there with my mother and had only heard about 'Chapel Street' through stories. Suddenly I was here, standing in front of the window she used to look out of, ...