New ways can be just as good as the best of the old

“I was getting a bit impatient with his choice of words!”

Archie’s 18-month-old grandson, Milos, had learned a few words, much to everyone’s delight. “But then he became stuck on one word that seemed to replace all the others. Everything he pointed to after a certain point became a ‘wow!’ We’d be driving along and his gran would point out a fire engine or a sheep or a seagull and he’d describe them the same way.

“Then he pointed to me from his car seat. His gran said ‘papa’, emphasising it in the hope he would copy her. But, instead, he put his heart into saying ‘wow!’ “And, you know what? It melted me! Then I thought, well, the world could surely do with some more appreciation.

“He’ll pick up new words as he goes along, but, for now, I’m enjoying his wonder months, and trying to be a bit more appreciative myself.”

Alistair was with his family in a soft play when he noticed a little boy trying to take a dolly from a little girl. Someone’s parent stepped in and sorted it all out.

Try to find the bright side, no matter what you feel. There’s usually an upside, to focus on and heal. Share things with another, their thoughts can reassure.

Go forward then with courage, feeling more secure.

But, later, when the place was closing, he saw the same dolly lying beneath a ramp, where it had fallen unnoticed. He fished it out and caught up with the girl and her mother as they were leaving.

“Thank goodness you spotted it,” the mother said. “It would have made for a very tearful bedtime if we didn’t have it!” It occurred to Alistair that he couldn’t have helped create that happy ending if the earlier unpleasant encounter hadn’t brought the dolly to his attention. “People often ask why bad things happen,” he told me. “But maybe they happen to remind us that we can do things better!” What if we didn’t just complain? What if we improved?

The days of the landed gentry may not have passed but they are changing.

The estate that John worked on since he left school had been family-owned for centuries. As a gardener, he had a tied cottage to live in – until a change of fortunes saw the “Big House” sold to a young professional couple with no need for staff.

John got a new home in town but would walk back and wander through the grounds. “I always expected to be chased away,” he told me. “But they talked to me, liked my stories, invited me for dinner.

“Now I can visit the old place whenever I like, they remember my birthday and their children call me Uncle John!”

The old familiar ways had their good points and their bad, but the new ways, it turns out, can be every bit as good as the best of the old!

It’s an old-fashioned idea, and perhaps seen as unnecessary nonsense these days.

Craig’s a man who walks on the outside of the pavement to save his wife from splashes and errant traffic. Dinosaur that he is, he will instinctively speed up when they approach a door so he can open it for her. It’s just the generation he was raised in. “But I can’t tell you how surprised I was the other day when I found myself doing the same things for a perfectly healthy man of my own age!” As far as he knew, he’d never done that for any other man. So, I asked him about it. It turns out he was keeping the other fellow company as he made the arrangements for his dad’s funeral.

He was grieving, and Craig was being... not a gentleman, but a gentle, caring man. And that will, hopefully, never be old-fashioned.