Totnes is full of single mothers and hardly any single men – my new friends in Devon were quite adamant.  “I hope you’re not expecting to find a partner down here!”  But I wasn’t moving to Totnes to find a partner, not yet anyway.

After 16 years living in a Buddhist community in London, it was time to move on, and my longing for a rural lifestyle could no longer be ignored.  But most importantly of all, my seven-year-old son, Jamie, deserved a more gentle upbringing than a city could afford.

Despite the good reasons, however, there was also an element of strange magnetism I couldn’t put my finger on.  In many ways I was leaving a great situation and jumping into the unknown,  but there was a compelling force drawing me on – and I had a daring, inexplicable knowledge that this was absolutely the right move.

So, one…