Okay, keep calm and carry on but sing and jump too

Our lives may be in turmoil, But we can play our part, By being kind and caring, And never losing heart. Keep smiling but be wary, And with hope and guidance too, We’ll row the boat together, And in the end pull through.

it might be the best advice i have ever given.

Three-year-old Blake was burning off some energy on his garden trampoline.

From over the fence, I could hear him singing Elvis’s All Shook Up to himself.

Then he moved on to Ike and Tina Turner’s Proud Mary. From which I assumed there was good musical education going on in that house. Keep singing, Blake!” I shouted over the fence. Hearing me, he bounced higher until he could see me. “I’m jumping as well!” he shouted back.

“Well, keep singing and jumping, Blake,” I replied. “Keep jumping and singing!”

Walking back indoors, I pondered the great philosophies of the world and wondered which of them would be more beneficial to more people than a good jump and a good sing. There you go, world, the answer to a whole lot of your problems, courtesy of myself and my little neighbour.

What with social distancing and not having a car, Stacey recently found herself having emergency provisions delivered by her dad.

She stood in the hall, he stood in the driveway. He wiped everything clean then said, “I’ll sit this here, this here, and this here,” placing the things he’d brought on the steps.

He backed off and she picked up the bags. All two of them.

As she started to say thanks and goodbye, he pointed a finger. “Ah-ah!” he said in a serious tone she knew well.

“I left a hug on the bottom step. Better not forget it!”

“So,” she told me later, “even though I am in my thirties, because my daddy said so, I picked up his invisible hug and wrapped it around me.

“And, do you know what? It felt wonderful!”

Invisible hugs! Bringing comfort for centuries, no matter how far the distance!

A week or so back, people started drawing pictures of rainbows and sticking them in their windows to brighten the days of people out for their daily walk.

Amelia and her mum. Mandy, painted a beautiful one straight on to the glass. And it raised plenty of smiles on their street.

But, amid all the home-schooling going on that symbol of hope now has another purpose at a time of anxiety and stress for families.

Whenever she’s near the window, the six-year-old has been tasked with looking out and counting how many smiles are pointed at the window.

“Like most children,” Mandy told me, “Amelia can be a little all-about-her. Wonderful, but a tiny bit self-centred.

“Counting smiles is my way of showing her how much happiness a simple act of hers can give to others.”

It might have been a lesson on radii, circumferences, and the area of a circle – but I like Mandy’s better!

Margaret’s first marriage was... tense.

Her children grew up in an atmosphere where expressions of affection were rarely used.

Her second husband, Rob, was a breath of fresh air. At the end of the day, he would read the children bedtime stories (which had never happened before) and, in a lilting voice, wish then “Lots of lo-ove”.

Of course, they thought he was weird. But, they suffered him, and he persevered.

Sadly, Pete died a few years back. Recently Margaret had been staying at her son’s house.

In the evening, she waited outside her granddaughter’s bedroom door for her turn to say goodnight.

Her son was in there, finishing a bedtime story, then she heard him sing “Lots of lo-ove” to his daughter.

“We aren’t rich,” she explained to me. “Rob didn’t leave me much. But...he left me that.”