My desk is scattered with sheets of paper with various scribblings on. My calendar has various dates filled with activities. My garden is looking decidedly autumnal with fallen leaves and flowers that need deadheading. And then….I get an email saying “yes, it’s me, can you write a Thought for the Day for next week?” Rather…
I recently met up with supporters of Operation Restoration, to join in celebrating 30 years of ministry to the street children in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. One of the “by-products” of the pandemic is the increased connectivity with friends 1000s of miles away. We had an overview of the work of Operation Restoration, and time for…
Greta Thunberg certainly caught the world’s attention with that one word! She was attending the Pre-COP 26 meeting in Milan, where various world leaders were meeting to try and agree on actions before the main COP-26 meeting in Glasgow which starts this week, and accused the world’s politicians of “30 years of blah! blah! blah!”…
I am now the proud owner of three different coloured passports, OK two of them have expired. Thank goodness my last one expired, my photo makes me look like a corpse! When you cannot wear glasses and you are staring straight ahead terrified you might blink as the camera flashes. There was a great deal…
If you get your milk delivered by the milkman you may have seen this image of the 5 Rs. REFUSE to buy unnecessary items. We are a society of consumers. Even in lockdown we were still shopping, with delivery drivers on the roads for long hours at a time, and not always essentials and grocery…
As part of my retirement gift from my colleagues at the Surgery I was given a voucher for a tour of the vineyard at Chilford Hall in Cambridgeshire. It was really interesting to hear how the grapes are cultivated on the vines, harvested and then turned into various wines – white, rose, red and sparkling,…
Those of us of a certain age may remember a song by Carol King on her Tapestry album entitled “I feel the earth move.” The chorus has the following lines: I feel the earth move under my feetI feel the sky come a tumbling downI feel my heart start tremblingwhenever you’re around. This song is…
There are two things that are meant to improve your chances of selling your house; the smell of freshly ground coffee and freshly baked bread. Apparently, the aroma of freshly baked bread evokes pleasant memories of childhood – and has more to do with chemistry than it does psychology. In an effort to cut down…
Did you know that Greenland was in fact named by the Norwegian-born Icelandic Viking Erik the Red who was exiled there for manslaughter? He named it Greenland in an effort to entice travellers to settle there. Far from being green, over 80% of Greenland is covered by a pure white ice sheet, and is the…
When I was a student sharing a house with 5 other girls, we had a pet hamster. Sadly I no longer remember the hamster’s name – but let’s call him Fred. We all loved Fred and took it in turns to feed him and clean his cage, which was kept in our dining room. One…