To try something for the first time.

Matthew was glad Judy was there. The green space outside the church was packed with shrieking children and tight-lipped mums standing behind buggies. The blown up castle was growling, swaying and huge. He’d never been this close to one before. The loudspeakers were pounding out Jive Bunny.

than the opposite’ Last week my niece was born and I felt the happiness fizzing round our house. The idea that life still has ways of bringing light and joy is a wonderful one.

His hands were so much bigger than hers, so when he told her to put her finger there, she hesitated. She can’t remember his eyes because they were so far up above her. People who knew him always tell her the same stories about him, and say they had loved him dearly. Her heart swells…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the need in most of us to be known, remembered and liked.

Your heart out. Watching Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday, Judi Love’s flamboyant, bootylicious dancing put a smile on my face and left a happy thought in my head.

Lean on eachother. Two days ago, after one of them snapped in two and in the absence of sufficiently tall canes, we put a long bit of string right round all of the sunflowers. It looks terrible but was necessary.

Stan took out his pocket watch and tapped it. Dead. He glanced at the small number of blank faces dotted around the railway carriage and tried to catch someone’s eye. Nobody looked up. He coughed apologetically. The stony-faced woman closest to him shifted in her seat. “Excuse me?” A whisper of a man jerked his…

My mum sent this photo a few days ago, marvelling at how something so amazing came from a tiny seed, dropped by a bird as he flew over her garden. She welcomed it as a promise that one day she too will be given a new, lasting life to replace the old tired version she…

My granny always said it. My mum did too, usually when we’d been packed into a boiling caravan playing relentless card games all day long- ‘would you go out and get some fresh air?!’ I suppose when I was more able I never paid attention to it, but now I’m noticing the times and days…