‘Their bodies say as much, or maybe more, than their faces. Or they may say something different.’ He paused, marking this paradox for the upturned faces. ‘A person might be smiling, but you can see from the way they hold themselves that they’re angry, in which case the body may be a more trustworthy guide to a person’s character or state of mind th

We were calling this a Life Class, except that the group had to describe the various positions we asked our models to strike in words, rather than with pencils or pastels. I reckoned writers had as much to learn working from a life model as artists did. They too should sit in circles studying the human form, both naked and clothed, striking differe

Even so, I was entranced by the woman’s story. To lose your sense of everything, to have to relearn everything, even how to use a cup, sounds like a rare opportunity to start from scratch, to grasp the workings of the world in a way we never get as adults, because we have been picking this stuff up since babyhood. There was something intoxicating a

Perhaps this woman had found a way to prevent the sad things that happen to us turning into secrets, then percolating through the subconscious and causing havoc in the dangerous territory of memory. The trick might be to proclaim your story, rather than hide it.

Today I saw a white Jaguar pull up on Bond Street and out stepped a young man with bleached hair dressed in a white outfit and carrying a little white dog. An amazing sight, but not useful material for a writer because the picture was already complete – there was nothing I could have added to it.

‘How are you?’ he asked. We were sitting in a ‘break-out’ area, in deep nourishing sofas that are intended to cradle fragile personalities. People come here to make difficult phone calls, and sometimes to get fired. ‘I’m well, thanks.’ ‘But how are you really?’ he said, looking at me so intently that I found tears pricking my eyes. I wondered if I

Today I arrived at work to find a woman at my desk who said it has been permanently assigned to her. She was wearing a tag that said Head of Leadership, making her somehow incontestable. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve never known exactly who you are.’

don’t know what kind of old ladies we’re going to be. The past may be a foreign country, but at least it’s one we’ve all been to

Perhaps all of us walk among ghosts, along haunted streets. Oxford Street and Piccadilly teem with unseen millions. We brush past Virginia Woolf in Russell Square and Charles Dickens on the Strand. We glimpse shadowy figures at the end of ancient alleyways. We’re connected with the past and future – but we can’t always make sense of the connections