I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus. - Gerald Durrell

dead by all the relatives. You are supposed to be head of the family – stop him writing it.’ ‘You do exaggerate, Larry dear,’ said Mother. ‘Anyway,

Like a gentle, enthusiastic, and understanding Noah, she has steered her vessel full of strange progeny through the stormy seas of life with great skill, always faced with the possibility of mutiny, always surrounded by the dangerous shoals of overdraft and extravagance, never being sure that her navigation would be approved by the crew, but certain that she would be blamed for anything that went wrong. That she survived the voyage is a miracle, but survive it she did, and, moreover, with her reason more or less intact.

you reached a small half-moon bay, rimmed with white sands and great piles of dried ribbon-weed that had been thrown up by the winter storms and lay along the beach like large, badly made birds’ nests.