Why a walk to the shop can be packed with memories

If we can be kind, instead of being harsh, we can make lighter days, and enjoy the laughs, if we can help one another, on our way through, spirits will be lifted, it all starts with you.

in passing, in our phone call, Helen mentioned her morning walk to the shop. or, it should have been “in passing”. it’s not much of a walk.

But she told me about the kingfisher she saw, she described a concrete fox by the side of an overgrown pond. She told me the sun had been up for hours but was only just clearing the church steeple. She named the wild-flowers growing by the road-side...

“That’s a lot of detail,” I said. She laughed and apologised. “I used to care for an elderly lady who never got to leave the house, but she loved to hear what it was like, so I memorised everything and told her. I guess I liked the habit too much to give it up.”

When we are all allowed out again, let’s take Helen’s habit of appreciation with us and pay attention to all the details we used to be too busy to see!

I have never asked Jim the precise nature of his disability?

For the years I have known him, he has used a motorised wheelchair to get around, he speaks rarely and with difficulty, and he is prone to fits. But, if you get chatting with him via electronic messenger, you soon discover he is “all there and more” as they used to say; a funny, sharp, intelligent guy.

Recently, in a bid to raise morale a community Facebook page asked its followers, “What are you thankful for?” There were various answers, some joking and some serious. One person was thankful for birdsong, another that her children were finally taking home-schooling seriously, another appreciated chocolate. Jim, who has fought his health battles since birth, simply said, “That I am alive!” His was the last comment. It was as if he had said it all. Over to you now, what are you thankful for?

Nathan is a ham-radio fan. He has an antenna rig in the garden and a broadcasting and receiving set on his stair landing.

His four-year-old great-granddaughter Lauren has been staying with them recently and the other day he caught her talking into the microphone (without the power turned on). “Some of it was gibberish,” he told me, “but it was peppered with phrases like, ‘No, I’m serious, it’s all good stuff’, and ‘it’s OK that it’s not OK’ and ‘hey, you’re gonna be fine!’.

“I so proud that when she had the chance to say anything at all, she said such positive things.”

“It might be that,” I replied. “But, who else does she hear talking on that microphone? Just you?”

As realisation of the example he was setting started to dawn, a blush spread up from his neck.

“No, I’m serious,” I said, and as I had so often heard him say, “It’s all good stuff!” “Hey,” I added, “you’re gonna be fine.”

“Disney World would never have been my kind of thing,” Alison told me.

Then she showed me a picture of her daughter when she was four – at Disney World, and a picture of her son when he was aged four – at Disney World.

“But, I loved it both times. Do you know why? Because I saw it through their eyes.”

Now she has a two-year-old daughter, and can’t travel anywhere, even a walk to the end of the garden path can seem miraculous, because the little one is seeing and doing almost everything for the first time, and loving it! People think we get wiser as we get older. But if that makes us less happy, is it really so wiser? Given the choice – and we do have the choice – let’s choose to see the world the way the ones who appreciate it most would do.