24 My earrings – I have many – today I’m wearing small blue enamel studs. All are small expressions of me – bright, subdued, sparkly, subtle, understated, eccentric…

25 It’s the Bard’s birthday – Robert Burns, Scotland’s poet . He’d have been ace at writing these small stones. And I’m taken back each year, as I am today – to primary school days – reciting ‘To a Mouse’. What foresight and wisdom in one small poem.