There have always been journalists in my family, so  conversations around the table in my childhood home in Kent tended to revolve around newspapers, politics and shop gossip, and the means to read and write were all around us. As the youngest of five I  soon worked out that the only way to get noticed was to try and write something clever. 

 

My father had a little office but it was full of golf clubs and box files so he didn't have room to write in there – he would sit at the kitchen table and bash away on his old manual typewriter at terrific speed,  completely focussed and oblivious of the hurly burly of children and animals crashing around him.  

 

Here are some links to pieces I have written over the years for newspapers, magazines and online content.  The mysterious Lucy Whaley who wrote some of them was me a few years back.