I was doing a presentation at a nursing home. That’s when I met Jane and Eric. Francis Gay Martin interrupted our chat by laughing. We’d been talking about how he lived with M.E. when something had caught his eye.

“He won’t hear you,” she told me. “And I can’t see you. But we’ll talk about it later and get the full experience.”

I complimented them on their teamwork and promised I would try to be worth their combined attention. Then I said: “You’re holding hands. Are you..?”

“Ohh, not at all,” said Jane. “We’ve both been widowed for years and we agreed the thing we missed most of all was having a hand to hold. So, even if we’re only sitting in the day-room and doing nothing else, we hold hands. Honestly, it does you all sorts of good.”

Simple, no strings attached, human contact. If you don’t have a hand to hold this winter, I pray you find one however you can.

As Jane says, it does you all sorts of good.

Alicia was feeling lonely. The children were off school and her husband was out of the country.

Everything was dependent on her. She missed adult chat and wished she had some help, but all her friends were busy.

Then she took ill. At the worst possible time, she thought. But her friends found space in their busy schedules. One took her to hospital, another took the children to her home, another bought shopping and flowers...and so on. Her husband flew home early. The illness was promptly and professionally dealt with by “lovely” doctors and nurses.

“I wasn’t really alone,” she told me. “We were all just busy being distracted by our own stuff. But friends were always nearby.”

Sometimes, sadly, we call out and no one answers. But, try falling down in a public place and see how many people rush to help!

It was a framed picture of his eight-year-old son and his five-year-old daughter. But it was tucked under the couch.

I picked it up and gave it to him. He smiled, then he brushed away the beginnings of a tear. He explained that when he over-exerted himself, he tended to fall down. His wife, rather than rushing to pick him up, and possibly scaring the children, had turned it into a game where they joined him on the floor, bringing cushions and blankets.

“I said I loved being so close to their beautiful faces,” Martin told me. “So, now, my boy has started leaving family pictures on the floor – just in case he isn’t there when I fall. So, I won’t be lonely.”

Children. They are the best medicine!