Sometimes I wonder where the time has gone, I took my first driving test in March 1976 which means that it is almost fifty years since that momentous day, I had longed to learn to drive from being young and had my first lesson in my dad’s three wheeler van on my seventeenth birthday.  I…

When I was a teenager, I sent a card to a young man I really liked but who didn’t care for me. It was a risky thing to do – to wear your heart on your sleeve. Although it wasn’t signed, the fact that I blushed every time I saw him since then probably broke…

Twenty years or more ago my father advised me to make sure I had a lasting power of attorney in place well ahead of needing it. We have recently gone through the tortuous process of creating and registering the necessary documents so that we can be supported should it become necessary. It is a long…

Last week I found out that February 4th was the 120th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s birth. It was too late to write about him on that date but I didn’t want the occasion to go by without paying tribute to a Christian leader whose life and death inspired me as a teenager and still inspires me…

Readers familiar with the Bible will recognise that the heading refers to a book and chapter, and some will immediately be aware that it records a fascinating story. A Christian man called Philip is preaching in a city called Samaria, the crowds “paid close attention to what he said” and the outcome was “there was…

The Rocks is a suburb of Sydney near the famous harbour bridge. It is named such because of the sandstone outcrops that dominated the landscape. These were quarried, filled and terraced over the centuries to conform with what the European vision of civilisation. Now it is a maze of alleys and terraced housing with chic…

Do not allow your past experiences, your background, your environment, your failure or your broken relationship stop you from moving on.  A football player may have challenges with his team but that would be not be the end of the world. Greater opportunities may be ahead of his or her career.  Life’s journey is filled with…

The Grimshaw family took delivery of our first ever television in 1972, it was a rental set from the DER shop in Pudsey and even though the signal left a lot to be desired we were connected to the delights of BBC1 & 2 and ITV and our lifes changed forever with this wonderful new…

Do you have any crocus flowers in your garden? I can remember when I was in the infant school, the crocus was the subject of much artwork – being reasonably simple to draw and one of the first flowers to appear after the winter. It isn’t native to our country, but originated in the Mediterranean…

We live in a house in which there are clocks in almost all rooms. They are synchronised on Sundays when they are wound and put right but as the week goes on, they drift apart, affected by air pressure and temperature and all the other things that old clocks are influenced by. One thing is…