For Refugee Week: God sees the tears of the oppressed
While Nicky’s not been well, I’ve slept in our spare room, where we’ve often hosted guests through the excellent organisation Refugees at Home. This is Refugee Week, and Tuesday was World Refugee Day. I found a small note in that spare room last night. It was post-it size, stuck to the bedside bookshelf so that you could only see
Saying ‘thank you’
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. I apologise to my American friends for not sending greetings sooner. ‘Thank you’ makes the world go round. If every relationship was graced by the words ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’, not just mouthed but truly meant, humanity would be in a different place. How often I’ve heard it said, with a worn-down
Why Small Things Matter
We have a new resident in our house, a temporary visitor I hope. It’s a hedgehog, whom Nicky has called Iggle; we don’t know its pronouns. We hope we can return Iggle to the gardens and hedgerows as soon as we safely can. It happened like this: I was walking down East End Road towards Fairacres where we were
A trove of love letters from World War I
It’s almost a year since Isca, Raphael’s and my second mother, died. At her house last night, amidst the sadness of teacups no longer set out for visitors and books no longer read, I found a small wooden case, perhaps originally a jewellery box, except that it was full of letters. Curiosity overcame me. I took them out and