The Defiance of Christmas Christmas isn’t always the easiest of seasons for a whole host of reasons. So many people were struck down with colds, flus, infections and Covid. Others had travel plans disrupted because of the weather and strikes. As the world is flooded with social media images of happy families around tables groaning […]
The Most Important Thing I caught an interview with the world famous Italian Singing star, Andrea Bocelli, and two of his children at the weekend. They had just performed on a chat show singing their song ‘The Greatest Gift’ about the true meaning of Christmas. It was a gorgeous performance and the audience rose to […]
Reconnecting The air was full of excitement as we all lined up outside. There were parents and grandparents, godparents and childminders and friends and we were all queuing up for our first school play in 3 years. The teachers and classroom assistants were there in Santa hats and Christmas jumpers and, as we walked down […]
Creating Unique and Welcoming Spaces One of the great joys of being the parent of a child with special needs is that you encounter unique and welcoming spaces in the world. Sometimes you find them in other people’s homes where people seem to open their hearts and their homes in such a way that they […]
Some lessons from the world of competition climbing Regular readers of the blog will know that there are often lessons to be learned on the life of faith from other disciplines, whether that’s the world of sport, or the arts, or inspirational people that we encounter. Last weekend, our son qualified to participate in a […]
Laying your body on the line Sad news came in just over a week ago about the death of Vicky Phelan at the age of 48. In 2011, Vicky underwent testing for cervical cancer and was given the all clear. Her smear reading was inaccurate and, in 2014, she was diagnosed with cancer. She began […]
The Tools of Your Trade I had a puncture on the school run earlier this week. Fortunately, it wasn’t too far from a tyre depot. As I limped my way in a very helpful young man told me where to go. There were industrial type Jacks which had the car up in a few seconds. […]
The Dull Stuff There are some people who thrive on administration and have a wonderful heart for systems and filing and work very methodically on keeping meticulous records. I am not one of those people. I do have aspirations and ambitions to be, but it hasn’t happened just yet. My desk is usually covered in […]
Marking Successes Have you ever noticed how poor we are in society at marking our successes? People are very quick to point out the shortcomings in a customer experience or to be critical of the performance of a sports’ team or a manager or our political leaders. Its easy and, indeed, rather satisfying to offer […]
Some Lessons from the Happy Pear One of the lovely things about writing this blog and recording a weekly podcast is that sometimes the readers and listeners interact with what you are doing. I recently invited listeners to the podcast to make a few podcast recommendations and had the chance to check out one of […]