Day 15 It’s tempting to think of kindness as a lovely soft thing. A pillow against the awful times we’re living in. An analgesic marshmallow. The easy way. Give money to the homeless, buy for the foodbank, donate a gift. Invite the estranged relative to the family feast; say
Day 14 I struggle to maintain a healthy relationship with food. Fat was bad when I was growing up; thin was marvellous, beautiful and (most importantly) unattainable. Other people could be thin, but not me, because I was ‘big’ from an early age. Carrots were ‘good,’ but they weren’t
Day 13 There’s a wall in my house that I want to knock down. James won’t let me, because we don’t own the house on the other side of it and he feels our relationship with our neighbour might be affected. The structural engineer won’t let me, because apparently
Day 12 The more awful things are, the calmer I am. When child three dropped a glass jar of pancake batter onto the kitchen floor, I cleared it up and made scrambled eggs for breakfast instead; I can run a birthday party for twenty, thirty small children at the
Day 11 And the second new commandment is this – THOU SHALT ACCEPT COMPLIMENTS WITH GRACE. It’s a very hard thing to do; it takes practice. We so habitually tune our inner voices in to the negative that the positive doesn’t always get through, let alone heard. You’re going
Day 10. We’ve already got a list of ten rules; I’m not sure we need another one. But some of the existing regulations are problematic, and the overall tone is a bit demanding. I am terribly glad I was born, but effective parenting has moved on a bit in
Day Nine I played in a concert yesterday evening and stuffed up so completely that I find myself seriously contemplating the merits of never, ever leaving the house again. At this precise moment, if you could guarantee me that Heaven consists of sitting on a white cloud playing
Day 8 Clever people don’t believe in God. I learned that long ago, from a father who had been brought up Catholic and lapsed spectacularly, for excellent reasons. He was – and is still, I’m sure – an atheist with all the passion of a convert. It wasn’t enough that
Day 7 President Trump talks about God a lot. Of course, when God’s son tried to enter the US, Trump wouldn’t let him in, what with him being brown and from the Middle East, but that’s not the bit Trump talks about. Trump wants God to lend his name
Day 6 Of all the things in the news at the moment, the one that makes me angriest are the photographs of Tory MPs grinning at the opening ceremonies of new food banks. What on Earth is there to celebrate in the need for food banks? Austerity was a