AND FINALLY

We have so much to be grateful for

WHAT would our lives be without gratitude? I know you’re probably thinking there’s not much to be grateful for, but why not start with just being alive?

That’s what a reader told me the other day — and this is the moment to thank you for all your lovely greetings and words of appreciation over Christmas and New Year. You do me so much good.

To give one example, David Neale, from Edinburgh, sent me a children’s poem printed in the Daily Mail Annual of 1947/48.

‘To an 80-plus-year-old, it is a reminder of very bleak times and rationing and great shortages of everything,’ he wrote.

‘While the present situation is unpleasant, we have survived worse and things will get better!’

Wise words indeed. The sweet Enid Blyton poem is called Salute To The Children and I share it here as a reminder that children and young people today might not be deprived of sweets and bananas, but lockdown still hits them very hard.

There’s no ice cream for you

to eat, No sugar biscuits, crisp and

sweet, No quivering jelly, all ashake, Not a single creamy cake, No holidays upon the sands, No donkey-rides, no jolly

bands, No bright balloons to toss

about, So many things you’ve gone

without.

No Easter eggs, exciting, gay, No crackers for your

Christmas Day, Oranges? Well, just a few, But no bananas all year

through. No thrilling toys, no birthday

treats, Not much chocolate, too few

sweets! We grown-ups think we’ve

lots to bear, But, boys and girls, you’ve

done your share!

÷ BEL answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.