I write for regional and national media. Here is some of my work:

There is something vaguely comedic about undertakers. The word provokes images of solemn old men in ill-fitting black suits - the sort of men whose faces you will never recall when you think of a funeral.
Which is why Rupert and Claire Callender are so utterly startling. They laugh, they wear jeans, they are incredibly funny and they love being undertakers.

It all started with a surprise 40th birthday present. I had no idea where my friends were taking me or what we were going to do. No, I wouldn't need my swimsuit. Or my wellies, or my walking boots. What could we possibly be doing that would fill a school day near home (a rather uneventful village) but wouldn't involve getting wet, or muddy, in winter? It turned out to be one of the most self-indulgent days I've had in years and I loved every minute of it.

When your job involves styling other people's homes there is an unavoidable pressure – making sure your own lives up to your reputation. But for Holly Keeling that is no problem. Her renovated Georgian farmhouse in Denbury, near the eastern edge of Dartmoor, has just been voted winner of the Period Living Readers' Homes Awards for 2008.

When you arrive at West Bradley Orchards it is clear this is a special place. After driving up to an impressive old stone farmhouse, you turn left over a small bridge and are faced with row upon row of trees, hung with fruit in every shade of green, yellow and red. The mature pear trees are laden, and look so like children's picture book images that you expect partridges to be sitting in each one. And there is every variety of apple you could name. Welcome to the home of The Orchard Pig cider maker.

Think upholstery and you will probably picture a man of late middle age, wearing brown overalls, hard at work in a dusty workshop. It's unlikely your first thought would be of a young man reading a magazine called Strippers And Stuffers. "It's our little joke," says Bruce Jack, a master upholsterer in Gunnislake, who currently edits this trade magazine with its slightly risque name.