Francis Gay

The space between Stacey’s block of flats and the next building is about 12ft wide. It’s fenced at one end and covered with stone chips. Mostly, it was used for fly-tipping.

Then Stacey started gathering old plant pots and filling them with flowering or fruiting plants. Some were tipped over, some were pulled up. But she replaced them. “The vandalism meant that the space was messy for a couple of days a month,” she said. “But it was pretty for the rest of the time.”

Gradually, the vandalism grew less and less, and the space is a proper garden now. And other neighbours contribute. The fly-tipping grew less and less until it stopped altogether.

“It was like that space wasn’t valued by anyone,” Stacey told me. “So, people felt able to degrade it even further. But once they saw that people valued it... things changed.”

Places...and also with people!

“They took me by surprise,” he told me, “this older couples. So, I helped them. I even went out my way to help them.”

He explained the details of the encounter and ended by saying, “When we said goodbye, she said they asked me for help because I had a kind face.

“You know I’m not kind,” he said.

I didn’t reply because, well, you don’t lie to a friend.

“But...” he continued, deep in thought, “that’s the second or third time people have told me I had a kind face. And... I kind of liked it each time. Maybe I should try to live up to it.”

I wished him all the best, and we left it at that. What will happen? I don’t know.

Can a few nice words by a few random strangers really re-shape a life. Let’s see. And, in the meantime, keep giving them out!

I had two conversations about “the little things” recently. The first was John telling me that the older he gets the more importance he values the little things.

“Like meeting someone new. Or a stranger taking the time to say hello.”

Then I met Agnes and, together, we mourned a friend who hadn’t lived to grow old. But Agnes took some consolation in the thought that she had helped her friend achieve one more tick on her “bucket list”, the list of things she wanted to achieve before she died.

“What was it?” I asked, thinking a bucket-list item would be something major. Agnes scrolled through the photos on her phone and showed me a picture of our friend on Blackpool promenade, eating chips.

“I bought the chips,” she said. The big, important, expensive, events are all very well. But it’s the little things that make a life!