We've nearly been washed away in Pembrokeshire this week. On Monday, heavy rainfall gave usa 'high-alert' warning. Drains throughout the county were unable to, well, drain.

Peter hates getting himself wet while I like the rain, up to a point. The point is, cats don't like getting their paws and fur wet. Not thatI have a cat but, my daughter who's enjoying a few days away, has a feline visitor andI have been appointed asBarracks Commander, Quarter Master, sous chef or whatever I want to be,as long as the cookhouse isn't blown up, I think.

So that's Harry, Oliver, myself and one cat, endless meals, cat treats, cups of tea, friends calling, waiting for a meal, more food, baking, frying,toasting, roasting, 'eat it now before it goes cold' and all the usual exhortations.

(I jest, because cooking appeals to my maternal instincts and they are all very grateful that Ibother and want to help clear up butI don't let them - most of them havepart-time jobs to finance their college existences and are pretty tired).

Harry and Oliver make ablefoot soldiers untilHarry, being ten minutes older, asserts his perceived superiority.Oliver restores the status quo by wrestling him down and then things return to a more or less even keel again. (Though Oliverwas First Lord toRichard 111, filmed in Pembrokeshire this last summer, thisbrush with glory does not stop him from settling scores with Harry.)

Actually, Oliver chose a duvet daywhen they were casting for the film - the boys are exhaustedmost of the time, despite the 'power' protein shakes. Their 'playboy' lifestylehas its downside, (they've graduated fromparties in the Preselisto the flats of student friendsin universities in almost every county in the land. Student rail cards get them there, then taxis to and from the station - living la vida loca, or something that looks like it).

Now, as I was saying about King Richard: Harrywas screen-tested and chosen as a lord, butbefore he got his moment in the sun, literally, because they were filming on variousbeachesin the south of the county, he was called on duty as a lifeguard, a whole season's work, instead of just a few days as an 'extra'.

My daughter, as the mother of twins,isacreative thinker. With admirable presence of mind, she hauledOliver out of bed, rang the producer and before you could say 'tout de suit', 'immediatement' or 'nawr, y funud hon',sent him to St. David's, to see if he could stand in for Harry. They are not identical twins, but my mother cannot tell them apart, nor can many other people.Not only was Olivergiven the part, he was promoted to First Lord.

To return to my story again - (everything connects with everything else, if you want it to and I do): there's a newgirl on the block, an adorableblack, fluffy cat belonging to peoplea few doors away. There's a song: 'Keep a-knocking but you caint come in', butthe song is wrong about this feline. She comes in all the time.

Itpoured last night butthe cat hadto go home. She'd been inall day.When I lifted her up she purred butstruggled when we gotto the front door.I managed to point her towards her own dwelling and watcheduntil she'd reached the doorstep.

When the last of the logs had burnt in the stove and one of the girlfriends had arrived, we all had a cup of tea andwent to bed.

Seveno'clock the following morning I heard a loud miaowing, outside I thought.

Ten minuteslater, the landing carpet was being scratched. Somehow, the cat had made it back in. Fearing for the carpet, I took her downstairsand gave hercat snacks.

Later, Harry said he'dlet the cat in during the 'wee small hours'.

Breakfast for us was vegetarian sausagesand eggs, toast andtea, bananas and grapes. ( Note: vege. sausages are good for breakfast as they are quickto cook and don't make a h...ish mess in the 'frimpan'.)

When I went home later, it was pouring. The drains outside my daughter's house couldn't cope and half the road was under water.

A nursery rhyme popped into my mind: 'They went to sea in a sieve, they did/ They went to sea in a sieve'. Thinking of allthe cooking I'd produced in the last few days Ithoughtthat might be the fate of Harry, Oliver and myself, squeezing ourselves into a sieve. Then I remembered the cat. We'd have had to find room for her, too, I suppose.

Yesterday, we went to Narberth. Some of the shops were so full Peter decided to wait outside, though the wind was keen.

I should have, too,because mostof the shops were so full, I had difficulty coming outagain.

'The Maltings' is one of my favourite shops, selling vintage and antique nick nackery. It is composed of small shop units, belonging to different people anddisplaying jewellery, vintage clothes, hatpins, furs, evening dresses, quilts, sheets, embroidered table cloths, cutlery, china,chests, chairs, kilims, brass, copper, Sir Kyffin Williams paintings and all manner of lovelyluxuries. Imaginea souk,stuffed witheye-popping treasures.

I'vebought pink-silk undies from the 1940's, cotton sheets trimmed with crochet, pillowslips, silver tea-knives,Melyn Tregwynt blankets (one in shades of blue, the other in purple) and I've got my eyes out for a red one.

'The Maltings' was full when I went in, so I dived into one of the little shops that was empty. Immediately,a family of four adultsfollowed me, so I decided to exit immediately, by turning sharp right and squeezing past somehandbags, which I swear I just glanced at quickly without stopping as I went by. Know what? They followed in my path and stopped to look at the handbags. (There were three other corners in the room, after all).

I've noticed a pattern (Idigress) but, if I stop to look in a shop window, other people crowd around me.

Anyone needing to give their business a boost can hire me to stand outside and peer interestedly at the goods in the window. That should shift a few hundred pounds worth of stuffin no time.

In another shop, my gaze alighted on some Christmas cards as I walked in. I did not stop, but two customers,on their way out and noticing what i was looking at, fell on them, saying: 'Those are lovely cards, yes, those are lovely cards'.(Theyreminded me of characetrs in a Pinter play: 'Do you like the cornflakes, Stanley', or something similar). 'Adjectivally challenged' went through my mind.

In Narberth, wheneverI looked at anything, someone immediately pushed in front of me

I'm not a particularly private person, but I don't like people crowdingme. I've developed a method: if I like something andpeople peer over my shoulder, I walk away. When they've gone, I take a closer look.

Every shop we went into was packed. Yes, Narberth, or 'Porth-ac-Arberth as it was called in the Mabinogion and home of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, is a boutique town, each shop a miniature gem.

This set us thinking: what makes a successful town? Why is Fishguard, visuallya jewel, emptyon a Saturday afternoon and Narberth full?

We've decideda successful High Street must havefabulous shops, offering something different and the shops must be close together. (Shoppers save their energy for walking around shops, not to shops). Good parking is another requirement.

So, Narberth hasfour or morepubs on the main street,a newsagents, a bridal shop,a stylish 'ladies fashion' shop, a 'bargain box',a Spanish cafe, a bakery, a hairstylist,a cosmetic salon,a more general fashion shop, threeart galleries,three shoe shops, a surf shop, three grocery shops, a florist, a wonderful 'gallery' with handbags, jewellery, cards toys, bags hats, books.

I'll stop or I'll make it sound like a huge place,which it isn't but it's success should be studied. I heard a shopper say: 'This place is in the middle of nowhere, but look what it's got!'

They'd come from Cardiff for the day, eighty milesaway, to shop in Narberth.

In times like this, someone should write a thesis on it.

Owain Glyn Dwr,the last native Welshman to hold the title 'Prince of Wales' was said to have magical powers. A gentleman and a scholar, Glyndwr had studied law at Oxford and at the Inns of Court in London.

Shakespeare,immortalisedhim in 'Henry 1V Part 1, changing thename Glyndwr, (Glyn Dwr), to Glendower, calling him that 'damn'd magician, Glendower'.

It was claimed that Glyn Dwr had the ability to 'call spirits from the vasty deep' andenchanted birds so that they sang out of tune. (This reference is picked up in a Beatles' songs in the line: 'Birds sing out of tune',but I forget the title).

Comets flashed in the skies, and the sun shonewhenGlyndwr was withfriends but thunderstorms accompanied him when enemies appeared.

Owen Glyndwr, Owynus Lei Cratia, Princeps Wallie, Owen by the Grace of God, Prince of Wales. A descendantof the Princes of Powys, this title was bestowedby the people.

Said to have been born in 1354, Glyndwrinspired a revolt againstHenry 1Vof England in 1400. Although the attack wasunsuccessful, yet itsucceeded in uniting the Welsh.

I became interested in Owain Glyndwr forty years ago. When I wasin Trinity College, the history group spent a week working in Haverfordwest Record Office. I was researching the coming of the railway in 1853 but oncehistorical documentsare in front of me,Iread them and this how I became caught up in Glyndwr's attack on Haverfordwest Castle.

Haverfordwest Castle was familiar to Glyndwr, because he was brought up a few miles away,inWolfscastle. Like all good guerilla leaders, he knew his territory well.

The castle was defended by the Earl of Arundel. The irony was that Glyndwr and Arundel had togetherfoughtthe king's cause in the Scottish wars, before Glyndwr had changed his politics, championing Wales over England.

Shortly before the attack on Haverfordwest,scouts were sent out to warn the townspeoplethat, if they valued their lives, they were to make for the banks of the River Cleddau.

The rebels, whose ranks were swelled byFrench soldiers and Spanish pirates,entered the town and turned their horses for the castle.Glyndwr was determined his golden dragon would fly from the battlements by nightfall.

Despite the bloodiest of fights, the castle did not succumb. Glyndwr escaped with his life.

A story is told of how Glyndwr appeared to the Abbot of Valle Crucis, greeting himby saying: 'Sir Abbot, you have risen too early'.

'No, Sire', replied the abbot, 'You are one hundred years too soon'.

I heard the sound of a horse's hooves coming down the road this morning, clear as a sparkle of cut-glass. Iran to the window.

I love horses, their velvety lips, the way they toss their heads, their smell, their serenity. I feel energisedwhenI've been close to a horse.

William and Catherine Sivell,my grandparents, were the licensees of the Black Horse Hotel, Pontardulais. They were the models for Dadda and Mamma in my novel, 'Salt Blue'.

My grandfather had a riding school, too,and kept horsesin thestablesbehind the Black Horse, where there wasa large field for them tograze.

Every flat surface of my grandparents' home was filledwith pictures of horses and my grandfather used to enter the pony and carriage classes in the local shows.

Harry Llewellyn, Pat Smythe and their mounts stayed in Pontardulais with them, at various times

My daughter, Kate, had a pony, too. When she outgrew Amber, we agreed Amber would be soldonly to someone we knew, who would care for her and this is what happened. We still talk nostalgically of Amber and have her pictureon the wall.

There are plenty of animal lovers around, not just horse lovers. Pooches who live near me have collars that light up when they take their nightly constitutional, they haveregular trims and manicures atthe pooch parlourand live oncooked liver, chicken breast, sausages and other delicacies.

What riles me is animal crueltyand some of the worst instancesoccurat horse racing events.For this reason, I never watchhorse racing andI take especial exceptionto the Grand National.

Recently, I heard of a horse whipped so much during somebig race or other that it had collapsed and had to be given oxygen to revive it. (I've hunted for this reference, butcan't find it at the moment, but there areplenty ofother shocking incidents to use as illustration).

At the American course at Belmont, a few weeks ago, Cape Blanco was whipped twenty one times.

If this and the other incident I mentioned had occurred anywhere other than on a race course, the perpetrators would have been prosecuted, but as it is 'sport', they get called before the Stewards, have a ticking off (a metaphorical slap across the wrists) and are banned from a few races.

After the big races, the jockey, the trainer and the owner are all interviewed on television and congratulated. I wonder if they and the gelatinous televison interviewer would enjoy a run around the track, accompanied bya sound whipping.How much faster would they run then?

There'sthe old argument that horses enjoy racing butI cannot see how it follows that they should be whipped. A skilled jockey can urgehorses on by using toes, ankles, knees and the reins. That is what is meant by the art of riding.

The 'Sport of Kings' can be barbaric. Because big money is involved,insiders don't care about animal welfare.Therefore, those who have a conscience should show their disapproval by shunning these events. Anythingelse iscomplicity.

'With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come' - I quote from the 'The Merchant of Venice', but there's precious little to laugh about in the newspapers today.

In Carmarthen, I heard an olderpersongrumbling, saying he couldn't afford to live muchlongerbecause it was was to expensiveto heat the house.

On the news, I heard that three thousand people in England and Wales are dying each year becauseenergy billshave rocketed.

Inflation is partly to blamefor this. A pension worth ten thousand poundstwenty years ago, has nowdropped to 5,658, in actual purchasing power.

But the headline that incensed mewas: 'elderly should be taxed out of their homes and let younger families move in'.

Anyone would think we lived in palaces, country estates or Knightsbridge mansions. It's tantamount to saying thatpensioners should be put on an ice flow and setadrift.

Peter and Ilive in a four bedroom house,bought with money we saved from one modest income.

The builder said it had two double bedrooms and two single rooms.Only one bedroom, with an en-suite,could honestly be called 'double'.

The other bedroom has a three quarter sizedbed, a wardrobe and dressing table, butlittle room to move around in.

We're not Royalty, but we like our own bedrooms. Myroom is hot, Peter likes his cool. I take three quarters of the bedand get annoyedif I'mwoken up and told to move over and share the duvet. Peter snores.

Tonight Peter has the twenty four hour heart monitor attached to him and, every time it tightens to check blood pressure, it beeps, but I won't hearit in my own room.

We also havea 'family bathroom',where Ihave to position myself 'just so'to close the door. (No hopes of getting the whole family in there).

In addition,we havetwo'shoeboxes'- (single rooms, according tothe builder).

The back room just about takestwowardrobes - (yes, I have clothes - my goodness, the way some people have it in for pensioners I expect they would like usto dress in Chairman Mao style pyjamas all day so we could give the moneysaved to the taxman). Sorry.I am getting bitter. It's an age thing. Ignore it.

The fourth bedroom, classified the 'Scriptorium', is whereI am at the moment. I can easily sit at the computer as long asI keep my stomach in.

Downstairs we have a not overly large sitting roomand a dining room, which we use for every meal, plus a kitchen, a utility room and a cloakroom.

If our house were any smaller than this, we would be falling over each others toes, yet we are being told to downsize by people who live inmansions! (CanI be the only one who finds this ironical, nay, farcical?)

I'm talking about the very same people who allowed house prices to soar, by allowing easy lending.

The words 'cant' and 'hypocrisy' keep popping into my mind. I can't think why.

Over the last few months I've been invitedto venues all over South Wales to talk about my novel, 'Salt Blue'. I enjoy meeting people and listening to their reactions to the book.

One night, someone I didn't know butwho was going to a class in thebuilding where I was giving a talk, fell into step with me andasked what my book was about.

I explained that one of the themes is about identityand the need to find out who one is. As she seemed interested, I said the story was about a young girl whohad to leaveherhometown and family and move to America to find her independence. Very often, in order to avoid beingmistaken for our parents, we have toshow the world who we really are.

My companion nodded, then told me she'd re-located from one end of the country in order to marry her same-sex partner. Her family could not accept who she was so, sadly, she had made the decision to move away.

On another occasion,I talked about stresses we're aware of on some level, butrefuse to examine, so they continue to trouble us. Stella has dreams and nightmares and she's advised to take up knitting as a way of relaxing. Eventually, a friend helps herto look at the roots of her unease and accept what she has known all along.

It's not always easy talking like this to a group, because it's hard to gauge their reaction. Isaid theanswers todifficult questionscan be found if weallowourselves to find the solution.

After I'd finished and almost everyone had left the room, one of my listeners waited behind to tell me about an accident she had suffered a few years previously. The result of it was that she had developedflashbacks to a time in her life she would rather forget.

Isuggested she kept a 'dream' diary. Any dream that woke her up, or she remembered the next day, was to be written down. Once the dreamwas on paper she had to visualise it movingfrom hermind into the diary and waiting there.

When the diary was full I wondered if she might want to turn it intoa book. This is what she was hoping to do, she said.

Conversely,she might find she was tired of the past and would want to burn the diary and the memories.

This is the power of writing, theaccess it gives to one'sthoughts.As E.M. Forster said, 'How do I know what I think until I see what I say?'

The problem with writing honestly is that we reveal ourselves, but anything less is boring. Think of Samuel Pepys, still entertaining centuries later.

It startedwith a tray clothwhen I wasseven years old, following a bout of 'flu. My aunt had visited, bringinga Hans Christian Anderson book of fairy tales, but they weren't to my taste, beingtoo sad: ('The Little Match Girl' starving in the cold and other mawkish tales).

To cheer me up my mother gave me some coloured skeins of silk andshowed mehow to sew over the traced blue outlines of alady in a billowing crinoline dress. Fortunately, because I would never have been able to sew her features finely enough at that stage,she demurely obscured her face from the sun with a parasol. In the background there was a weeping willow tree and some roses, an arbour, paving stones, every kitsch cliche you could think of. I was thrilled.

Thus beganmy passion for embroidery. (Incidentally, anembroidery brand I was particularly fond of was called 'Penelope'. Penelope was the unfortunate embroideressin a Greek myth who was warned that once she'd finished her needlework her husband would be slain. To avoid this, she unpicked her work each night. Poor lady.)

TodayI was looking at pictures of the Bayeux tapestry in a book. This massive work of art, measuring seventy metres in length, used eight different coloured wools. It was worked by English seamstresses and records William of Normandy's conquest of England.

Centuries later, the last invasion of Britainoccurred just a few miles away from Fishguard, on the 22nd February, 1797.

A number of years ago, a friend of mine, Elizabeth Cramp, also a talented artist, decided to record this event in the time honoured way:she gathered a group of Fishguard enthusiasts and they produced their own version of '1797 and all that'.The tapestry was put on display andraised money for local causes.

Stained glass windows in churches were known as 'biblium pauperum' in medieval times, the 'books of the poor', where people could gaze at them and learn the Bible stories.

Art and learning are multi-dimensional, the best way of fixing things in our consciousness.

Sorry, I've got a one-track mind. Once I start seeing things, they pop up everywhere- ( 'there are no coincidences' - I'm very fond ofFreud).

The book I'm thinking of again, is: 'How Does She Do It?'

Well, it was all over Saturday's 'Daily Telegraph'. The front page revealed that the woman onwhom it was basedspent most of her waking hours asa global fund manager. Tied up as she was in her job, this did not prevent her fromgiving birth, in fairly quick succession, tofour children. (High powered women like you to know they do everything pronto).

The childrenrarely saw their mother (we're beinghonest, now), just the twenty four hours a day nannies. Even Saturday morning wasMummy's 'me' time'.

Laterthe childrenwere dispatchedto boarding school. The mother claimedher job was so important to her well-being she simply couldn't give it up. What I'd like to know is, who forced her to have children, when she madeno time in her life for them? This familycertainly did not need the money, as her husband's job enabled them to live comfortably.

TheTwin Towers tragedy was the wake-up call, whenthe motherwas in New York and one of her daughters becameupset. So, having missed the babyhood and early yearsof the elder three, the mother then retired form her important job.

Now, there aren't many jobs like that in Haverfordwest. Quite a few nurses, teachers, bank workers, part-time shop assistants, farmers' wives, bed and breakfast proprietors, but nothing vaguely 'superwoman' andperhapswe should be thankful.

I do know a few families where, because the husbands werein the forces serving abroad, or in the higher echelons of the civil service, the children were entitledto go to boarding school for free.

Although somedid not like boarding school, most of themachieved good results and went toOxford and Cambridge.

Where are they now?Rarely seen by their parents, they work overseas or in London.Visits home are rare ashens' teeth.

When one friend asked me why her children did not bother with her, I could hardly say they had not forgiven herabout boarding school.(I know this because they told me).

I feel no sympathy for these 'Superwomen', who live the life they've chosen. I can't help feeling for the children, though.