As a child, my mother often took me to the village jumble sale. I remember the stampede of people that crowded into the small church hall seeking a bargain. It was a frightening experience and I often hid beneath the tables which were piled high with clothes, books and bric-a-brac.

     It was those times beneath the tables, that I discovered my love for books. There were endless amounts to choose from but Enid Blyton’s famous five were my favourite. And although I was very young, I could read them quite well. By the time I was eight, I was writing my own adventures stories to read to my dolls.

     Those old books are still with me and sit on the shelves at our home for waifs and strays. And I still add to them every time I go to a jumble sale.

     Jumble sales were once a big part of village life and still are where I live in Wales. It is a great way to raise money for charities and one can have hours of fun picking up amazing bargains.

     When people come to visit our home for waifs and strays, there is always a story to tell about many of the items that I bought at a charity shop or a jumble sale.  

Wondering through our village recently I saw a sheep, determined to eat the grass on the other side of the hedge. It reminded me of the day I ran away.

     As a child, I lived with my crazy family on another planet. My father (a mad professor type of man and lover of poetry and a great musician) often carried out his wild experiments inside our home. Many times we almost lost our house, let alone our lives, when an experiment went horribly wrong. It was for this reason alone, I decided to run away. I was just six years old.

     With my life’s saving securely locked in my brown plastic piggy bank and tucked under my arm, I left! I didn’t want to leave my kittens behind but they wouldn’t stay in the bag I put them in so I said a tearful goodbye. At the end of the garden, I met my father who looked at me curiously.

     ‘Are you off on an adventure?’ he asked, eyeing up my small bag and my piggybank. Everything was an adventure to my father, even a trip to the local shop. I nodded, trying not to look at him. To my surprise, he opened the gate for me.

     ‘Don’t be away too long,’ he said calmly, ‘I will miss you!’

     I remember quite well, the strange feeling of looking back over my shoulder to see him waving to me. The most important person in the world was letting me go.

     ‘Just one thing,’ he shouted, ‘the grass isn’t always greener on the other side!’

     I stopped and thought about what he said. It didn’t make sense.

     ‘What grass?’ I shouted back.

     ‘Life,’ he replied.

     Grass! Life! Even at that young age I was curious about everything so I turned and walked back. I looked up at my father on the other side of the gate. ‘What grass?’ I said quietly.

     My father opened the gate and knelt down in front of me. ‘The same grass in our garden as the grass you are now standing on outside it.’

     I remember looking at the grass. The grass in our garden was almost gone, chewed up by our hens, whereas, the grass I was standing on was thick and green.

     ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’s what you do with that grass that matters. If you let it go without tending to it, then it won’t flourish. The grass you are standing on is nurtured by the community and so it thrives.’ He closed the gate and together we stood and looked at our garden. It needed attention, even I could see that.

     ‘I guess we need to attend to a few things,’ said my father. ‘We shall start today and watch our own grass flourish and not the grass on the other side.’

     ‘And the house too?’ I asked.

     We were both smiling as we walked into the small wooden hut we called home. The smell of burning (another gone wrong experiment) still pervaded through the air but that didn’t matter anymore, what mattered was that my father took me home to where the grass was greener.

     I had forgotten all about that story until I saw the sheep today. Thank you sheep! Thank you dad, for all the wise things you taught me. They didn't make sense at the time but they certainly do now!

I believe that every baby born is special. So imagine my horror when I heard of the ‘fish and chip’ babies in Africa.

      Born into a life of extreme poverty and many already infected with the HIV virus, these innocent newly borns are wrapped in newspaper and sent home...they are known, as the fish and chip shop babies.

      We recently flew over to Ireland to visit some friends and were humbled to see the work they were doing to help the children in Africa. They had put together a team of people who knitted tiny, colourful jumpers for the fish and chip shop babies. These jumpers were no bigger than the ones we use for the rescued hens, back at our home for waifs and strays.

      As I took a picture of the colourful jumpers, which were being exhibited before being sent to Africa, I couldn’t help but think of these tiny babies. No baby should have to be wrapped in yesterday’s newspapers....

If anyone out there would like to knit a jumper, and find an organisation to take them, the pattern is as follows:-

Baby Jumper knitting pattern (Knitted all in one)
Approx. 50g DK wool

Use double knitting wool and 4mm needles, cast on 44 stitches.

Work 18 Rows in K2, P2 rib

Work 30 Rows stocking stitch (1 row plain, 1 row purl)

Cast on 12 stitches at beginning of next 2 rows and at the same time change to K2,P2 (for sleeve)

Rib 22 more rows.

Next row: Rib 21, cast off 26 stitches, rib 21 (Please cast these stitches off loosely in rib, to Allow the neck to stretch over a baby’s head)

Next row: Rib 21, cast on 26 stitches, rib 21 (Please cast these stitches on loosely, using one size bigger needles if necessary).

Work 22 rows in K2, P2 rib

Cast off 12 stitches at beginning of next 2 rows

Work 30 rows stocking stitch

Work 18 rows, K2, P2 rib

Cast off. Sew side and sleeve seams.

It dawned on me today that we have been friends for almost a year!  But it’s a weird sort of friendship when I don’t really know who you are! I know you are there, because I can see that many, many thousands of you have popped in with inquisitive eyes to read about the goings on at our home for waifs and strays and the gossip in Gusty Gully, a fictitious village...or is it?  

     Not knowing you but writing to you every evening, is just a tad bit weird but quite amusing and in many ways, humbling! I have learned so much from our nightly tales, editing, research, giving the story a beginning, middle and an end. Characters have to be believable and believe me, many of them have entered my life in some way, shape or form! Some of my tales (mostly true) have tugged at people’s hearts and caused many tears, and a few laughs I hope!

     The tales about my father are true, he was as eccentric as they come and indeed my childhood was unconventional and far from boring. Before he died, my father spent many days sitting by the pond at our home for waifs and strays, listening to me read. I guess that is why the pond is often mentioned in my tales.

     Every day I wake up and think about all the things I have to do and I think about YOU! I think about what tale I will tell you and what tale you would like to hear.  I never ever decide until the last minute. You see, there is always something going on at our home so there is always a story to tell. Although, I’m quite sure, that even if I was locked up in a room with four white walls and nothing else, I would still find something to write about.

     So, whoever you are, I would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ for keeping me company when the rest of the world appears to be sleeping.

Once a month I leave our home for waifs and strays to go to a ‘Knit & natter’ group in another village. I have to say, that more natter than knitting goes on. It is on these evenings I get a lot of ideas for my books, especially characters. Take for example, Phil the fish.

     Now Phil the fish is a man who loves to chat, usually about fish. He can tell you where in the bay you can get the most mackerel and what tackle is the best to use. An awful subject if you’re a vegetarian!

      ‘Have you seen Phil the fish lately?’ said Jan the van at the meeting the other night. This is her real name and she is a farmer who drives a van usually full of farm things like straw and animal feed and sometimes the animals themselves.

       I saw him talking to Huw the news in the shop the other night, I replied. They were talking about fish again. No surprise there.

      'You have to send your thoughts down the line,’ he was telling Huw, ‘if you want to catch the fish!' Then he looked at me.

      I had no intention of catching any fish, I told him, so he talked about women instead or rather, he moaned about the lack of them in his life.

       ‘Bet he asked you to find him a woman,’ said Bev the bee (you guessed right, she is a bee keeper).

        He did, I said, and I promised we would keep an eye out for a woman who liked fishing and boats, especially dirty smelly ones like his.

       We all laughed and agreed that this could take forever.

       ‘What about Dan the man?’ said Bev the Bee, ‘I heard he was having a hard time on the farm now that his father’s died.’

       ‘Give him time,’ said Jan the van and he’ll be asking us to find him a woman too.’ We laughed again but half heartedly, as everyone was fond of Will the milk. He was a true character and would be well missed.

       The following ten minutes was spent dissecting poor Don the loaf’s impending divorce and the cause of his marriage breakdown.

        ‘He’s spent more time delivering the bread than he did making it,’ someone said, ‘and now we’ll have a generation of children growing up to be bakers!’

         We laughed but we knew that that was not the case, Don the loaf was a good man and so was his wife.

        We talked a little more about Tom the shoe and how his business is struggling because of the big stores and we ended with Jack the plasterer, who had fallen off a ladder and broken his leg.

         I was glad my kind an unassuming husband was nowhere to be seen. He would not want to hear the gossip of these women and would be ashamed of my participation. But there was no harm meant, there never is. It’s just the way of village life...a sort of natural counselling service you could say.

         Perhaps knit and natter clubs should open up all over the world. It would certainly do more good than harm....I think!