The world from my window

Forty years ago (I can't believe it's forty years ago), I entered with great trepidation the Portakabin of Life as part of the Mirror Group Newspapers training scheme in Plymouth. I was eighteen and rather nervous. I didn't really feel like I belonged there, alongside clever graduates from Oxford and similarly lofty establishments. I was a comprehensive school girl from Somerset. But English was the only subject I was ever any good at. And since the age of about nine or ten, I'd wanted to be a journalist. I put that down to having watched the wisecracking Rosalind Russell in the 1940s film His Girl Friday . I wanted to be like her - smart, sassy, witty, independent. I also wanted to wear those suits. And maybe catch the heart of Cary Grant. The school's careers adviser said journalism was a competitive business and I'd be better off in retail management or train to be a librarian. I can't sell anything for toffee and I'm not particula...

I went on the march yesterday. It was an early start, driving into Bridport accompanied by Tony Blackburn on Radio 2 to catch the seven o'clock bus to London, and then back home again at ten at night to Craig Charles's House Party. In the interim, my friend won a 'I'm one of the Liberal Elite (apparently)' T-shirt in the raffle on the coach and I acquired a Union Jack-meets-the-EU-stars flag as we waited for the march to set off. It was the first time I've been on a mass protest since 1983. In a country torn apart by Brexit, it was the most positive many have felt in a long time. Surrounded by people of all faiths, colours, creed, all united for a common cause. We, the forty-eight percent, others who have changed their minds in the last three-and-half years and those who, in June 2016, had been too young to vote. There were teenagers, old people, the middle-aged, millennials and children. There were dogs and unicorns, masses of drums and big, bold ...