Shirley revelled in her passport to happier and healthier times

For most people, renewing a passport is an expensive nuisance.

For Shirley, the new passport arriving was an excuse for a tea-party.

She didn’t tell us what we were celebrating until everyone had their coffee and cake.

When she produced the official document, it got a spontaneous cheer!

You see, she had paid for a 10-year passport. Which would be no big deal for most of us, but Shirley has just successfully completed a course of treatment for a cancer which, at one point, suggested she might not have one year left!

The passport is her statement of faith in the future and in her firm belief that she has one again.

Happy travels, Shirley – and many of them!

“Did you see them, Harry? Isn’t that wonderful?”

I nodded to the elderly couple, walking into the distance, arm in arm.

“Companions in the journey through life. Him offering an arm, her taking it and holding it tight.”

Harry reckons he has a more realistic view of life than myself and, walking to meet me, he had seen them from the front.

“Aye,” he grunted, “Except they were arguing. She was telling him off, and he was having none of it.”

I could tell he felt he’d put my gas at a peep.

“Arguing? Really?” I asked. “And not an inch of a gap between them. Still arm in arm. Isn’t that even more wonderful?”

Laughing, I offered him my arm, but he would have none of it.

Not very interested in being wonderful, is Harry!

While the in-store first-aiders took care of the woman suffering a dizzy turn, I noticed the security guard divert her young son.

He brought a seat over, showed the boy the monitors covering the whole shop, pointed out how he controlled the cameras, then, at the end, allowed him to speak on the PA system.

“Mum’s all right now,” the little lad announced. “Thank you for helping her!”

I complimented the security man on his heart and his ingenuity. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “I’d rather have them on this side of the cameras than the other, any day!”

It made me wonder what difference we might make in society if we each took a young one under our wing like he had. If, as an educator once suggested, we “each one teach one”.

We hear a lot about road-rage but, of course, 99% of all the drivers on the road are kind and courteous – like Gerry.

He’s the son of a friend and he recently passed his driving test. I happened to be passing the first day he arrived home in his new car.

I asked him where he fancied for his first road-trip. I imagined him heading out with his friends, letting off steam somewhere, perhaps. But, no. “Our neighbour Mrs Colvin is losing her sight,” he told me. “I’m just popping in there now, to see if we can arrange a regular time for me to take her shopping.”

Kindnesses like young Gerry’s will never make the headlines, but they are more common than some people suspect.

I tipped my cap to a brand-new knight of the road and walked on.