Fi Phillips

It's going to be a busy month with two family birthdays, Father's Day, client articles to write and a murder mystery to finish off for another client. Add to that the fact that we won't be having our normal June getaway because my daughter has exams and I don't think there'll be much of a chance for a breather this month. Having said that, I like busy. Busy pays the bills and keeps away the boredom. All that 'busy'  means that this month, more than most, I'll be planning like crazy. Here's my tick-list for June: Buy presents: For my son that'll probably be Overwatch related. Zenyatta is his current favourite character to play, plus he's now got a bank account and is very keen to earn interest on his money. My husband has had his main present already so we'll be looking for a selection of smaller offerings for his birthday and Father's Day, but nothing gimmicky so I'll be steering the teens away from the comedy socks. ...

Eric Arthur Blair was born in 1903 on today's date. George Orwell was the pen name he used to write as a novelist and journalist. My father was a great fan of Orwell but I came to him as many of my generation did through studying his novels ' Nineteen Eighty-Four ' (written in 1949) and ' Animal Farm ' (1945) at school. There are a handful of books and plays that have remained with me from school - Day of the Triffids, Macbeth, Great Expectations and the Orwell novels.

You would have been 86 years young today.

Another year, another birthday. Today I have reached the grand age of forty six years. I am now officially nearer fifty than forty. Do I feel old? Mature? Wise and cultured? Er, no. I feel like, well, like me. That's the one thing that I've always carried with me - me. If I have to put a finger on the age I seem to relate to, then I suppose it's somewhere in my early thirties. Having said that, what exactly does it feel like to be in your early thirties? I didn't know then and I don't know now how I'm supposed to feel or behave at this age. A twenty-something Dorothy My mother's generation always seemed to know how to act at different stages in their lives. In her twenties, my mother was a dutiful daughter, the youngest child staying at home to help her parents. In my twenties, I was opinionated to the point of thinking I knew better than my parents and I dressed like Margaret Thatcher (they called it 'power dressing'). My mother's third ...

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