We could just stop there actually. If the photo made you laugh then my work’s done. A few weeks ago I was with my son at the orthodontist. She asked him to smile and then said, ‘we could make that smile even better’. So next month he’ll be sporting braces. I didn’t think there was…

As I was walking up a hill towards our house in Donegal two days ago, I had a memory of my cousin and me deciding to walk in our bare feet the whole way from the beach on that road. Every ten metres we would stop and cry out, ‘look how far we walked!’ That…

Last week I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Quite literally. I’d done the too long walk across the rippled sand and now I didn’t have the strength to get home. My mum phoned dad and he drove his 4×4 over the rough hill road to get me. Problem was, there were…

Last week I was in a slow-moving queue in a sports shop. As I shared an exasperated look with another customer, she turned to her friend and said loudly, ‘if I’d known it would take this long, I’d have brought a picnic.’ We all laughed, forgetting the heat, expense and stress of our surroundings for…

Pushing down on me, pressing down on you.*

Do you ever find that, already at your wit’s end, something new explodes in and knocks you flat? Before that, you were saying to yourself, this is as much as I can take. Now, the next thing is pressing down on top of everything else.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to not have MS. More than anything. I would love to be able to walk beside my family wherever they go, to move with grace, to wear nice shoes, to not have this imprisoning, wretched, sometimes terrifying disease. BUT yet again I’m discovering an amazing capacity for kindness…

I had a disastrous cake day on Saturday. The day was already busy, but I found myself baking two cakes and encountering failure both times.

My daughter and her dad left to walk round the lake yesterday and I had the choice of either sitting in the stuffy car or finding a seat outside with a view.

I know some people (my dad for instance) who never pass up a chance to laugh.