Tim Dowling: having a tortoise reminds you that life is long

My wife got ours when she was eight, and he came to live with us soon after we got married.

I don’t remember anything about that in the vows It is the first truly bleak day of autumn – the sky is a deep grey and a steady drizzle is falling. Sitting in the unflattering light of a kitchen downlight and looking out the window, I think: this is it now, until spring. Except it isn’t, quite, as a few hours later the cloud begins to break up…