She criticised one person after another, including her neighbour, admitting it might be different if she got to know the woman. Francis Gay

MY WEEK

Love it or loathe it, it’s gardening time again! Now, I’m comfortable with cutting the grass and trimming the hedges but, beyond that, I turn to my local expert for advice. I pointed to some foliage by the foot of our fence.

“I don’t know what that is,” I told the Lady of the House. “Do I pull it up, or do I leave it be?”

“Oh, that comes through from our neighbour’s garden,” she told me. “It’ll be flowering in a week or so.”

“So...we like it?” I ventured. “We do,” she assured me.

And, no doubt affected by the sun, I started wondering how it would be if we lived our lives in such a way that what spread over the edges, affecting other people if you like, added beauty to their lives as well.

Would we like that and leave it be? I rather think we would!

Her companion listened, offering occasional diplomatic excuses, and tea.

Then the first woman snapped. “It’s OK for you. You have a car, a dog, a life! I don’t even have a life,” she snorted.

Now, she may have had good reason for condemning the world. Perhaps I was unfair in judging her.

But I don’t think I judged her companion unfairly. The woman who had listened. I’ve met people like her before.

They stick by people, no matter how hard work they are, no matter that everyone else has given up. They know they are unappreciated, but also that they are the last support their friend has, so they stay...

They are worth praising.

“How did it go yesterday?” I asked. Tom told me he’d seen the children to school then gone to his dad’s house to take him to hospital.

They struggled down the stairs and into the car, where they remembered he needed a Covid test before he’d be admitted. So, they did it all again. He waited outside the cancer ward while dad got his treatment, then he took him home. He only just made it in time to collect the children from school.

He made dinner for the family, then went out for an evening shift at a restaurant, where he had to fake a smile when some customers complained – loudly and unpleasantly – about their food.

We pay lip service to the old saying, “Be kind.” Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Perhaps we need to start understanding how true that really is.