The roar of the Tigger

 "Only the weak are cruel. True gentleness can only be expected from the strong."

(Leo Buscaglia)

 

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."

(St Francis de Sales) 

 

When I was a little girl, I decided I was going to be Tarzan's Jane in the jungle: the jungle in question clearly my parent's long, lawned back garden, complete with trees, swing, vegetable patch and Dad's mysterious homemade shed. Within a year or so, I decided the jungle was a bit tame and Tarzan probably a tad boring and made the career choice of Doctor Who's Assistant. And this was long before I became smitten with David Tennant (best Doctor Who ever).
Often easily thwarted by my own lack of self-confidence, I can be utterly fearless in situations larger than the petty scrutiny of appearance, background or what is appropriate behaviour or position. I have a friend who believes that most folk can be identified with the characters from "Winnie the Pooh" stories; recently, she announced that I was "definitely a bit Tigger". Apparently, the similarity has much to do with my energy and enthusiasm rather than my bottom being made out of springs... Although I do tend to bounce about a bit when I'm particularly excited or enthused by something. Like Tigger, I do have a tendency to climb up things with no real consideration for how (or capacity) to get down again. Also like Tigger, I can appear mindlessly courageous when I am actually most scared and simply wanting to be stroked and given a slice of treacle tart. His bravado is usually borne from loyalty and protectiveness rather than cussedness or aggression; I like Tigger.
I was actually born in the Chinese year of the Tiger, a favourite animal of mine. I love cats, and tigers are just whiskery, big pawed, stripey kittycats. But I also love their sinewy prowess and effortless, graceful strength; if only they could embrace vegetarianism. There's a palpable power in gracefulness, as there is an ingenuity in the most instinctive courage. Although the Sunday school meekness that will inherit the earth is often seen as interchangeable with gentleness, I've always felt that true gentleness can be as in-your-face as the loudest roar.
Someone in my neighbourhood is trying to push me around at the moment; attempted bullying, if you will. I find it upsetting, most simply because I've tried to help and support this person. I've tried to show them kindness and tolerance. I realise now that they've interpreted my own brand of gentleness as vulnerability and weakness, probably enabled by my stature, blondeness and penchant for floral frocks.
I don't like aggression and find slanging matches distasteful and wearying. On a rugby pitch, I would much prefer to deploy my dummy sidestep and sprint rather than throw myself headfirst into a tackle. In spite of any health glitches, I'm aware of and thankful for my physical strength; I could definitely kick-box my way out of a paper bag, but I would infinitelyy prefer to dance or cuddle.

 

 

 

Christians learn about God's "relentless" tenderness and mercy as an essence of our faith. Aside from organised religion, our greatest heroes of justice and righteousness, folk like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and most recently Nelson Mandela, have been staggering in their graciousness; their words of reconciliation resonate around the world and across class and culture. These people were natural leaders, defenders and champions; far from pushovers. Vociferously pacifist, they sadly also became threats to those whose insecurities fester on force, division and control.
Gentleness doesn't have to be meek; it's a bold, brave and sometimes isolating path to take through today's hyperactive, hyperbolic world. You have to be pretty tough to maintain your grace in the face of spite and injustice. It's very empowering to realise that refusing to claw your way up and over others has lifted you out of the fray. Personally, I believe that my God would want me to turn the other cheek, but still avoid being bitch-slapped in the first instance. I hope I'll always have enough self respect as well as compassion to refrain from back-biting and snarling; but the occasional roar from a lamb can confound the hungriest lion in the jungle.
If anyone from the BBC should ever stumble upon this blog, I would still like to be Doctor Who's Assistant. 

 

  
"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time."

(St Francis de Sales)

 

  

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a
listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all
of which have the potential to turn a life around."

(Leo Buscaglia) 

 

 

"Roar"  Katy Perry

 

 

Each time you blink

 

 "While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage: the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives."

( Antonio Guterres, United Nations Refugee Agency)

Yesterday was World Refugee Day; very tellingly, I forgot about it, as many did. It took the often stunning but exhausting Russell Brand on last night's Question Time panel to remind me, and the audience. So often in these economically depressed times, the word is "Refugee" and yet we hear "Immigration"; and we feel the boundary.
A United Nations report issued this week confirms starkly that that we’re experiencing the worst refugee crisis in nearly two decades. Nearly 50 million are currently displaced from their homes due to conflict or violence. This is the highest number since 1994, when millions of people fled "ethnic cleansing" and genocide in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The majority of today's refugees are originally from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria. Beyond any scaremonger sloganeering from any political corner or hole, it may surprise many in the U.K. that the countries that historically have most opened their borders to refugees remain constant: Pakistan, wracked by its own crises; followed by Iran, Germany and Kenya. Turkey has joined the "top ten" list after giving refuge to an influx of Syrians, displaced by or fleeing the civil war.
The United Nations estimates that the war in Syria, now in it's third year, has forced 1.6 million Syrians into neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. They flee from a conflict which has so far killed nearly 100,000 people, crushed their homes, schools and businesses and denied their identity. They do not leave by any choice other than the will to survive and to see their children live. It's the same spirit which gets you and I out of bed in the morning, scratching and groaning, to grab breakfast and get the bus to work; minus the job, the bus, the breakfast and the home: insert fear and hunger instead. Later this year, the number of refugees from Syria alone will reach 3 million. For those of you who don't find the Bible believable or relevant to modern living, there are situations of epic displacement, persecution and exodus across the world right now.
As this summer solstice dawned, as with each new day, another 23,000 people began their own search for safety or refuge from persecution. Few borders are geographical rather than manmade; worldwide problems don't stop at checkpoints. Charity certainly should begin at home but the outside world which essentially houses all of us, does not begin or end at your own doorstep. Our world has a newly internally displaced person every four seconds. As Antonio Guterres, chief of the U.N.'s Refugee Agency says: "Each time you blink, another person is forced to flee,"

 

"On World Refugee Day, I call on the international community to intensify efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts, and to help achieve peace and security so that families can be reunited and refugees can return home."
(Ban Ki-moon, U.N. Secretary-General)

 "In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees."
(Angelina Jolie, U.N. Envoy)

 

www.unhcr.org/World-Refugee-Day

 

 

"Seven Seconds" Youssou N'dour with Neneh Cherry 

"What a piece of work is a man"

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

(Will Shakespeare)

Yesterday was of course St George's feast day, but also the birthday of William Shakespeare, playwright and love-poet extraordinaire We can't know for sure that Will was born on 23rd April: he was definitely baptised on 26th April 1564 and the ceremony would traditionally have taken place three or four days after birth. We know that he died on 23rd April 1616, and folklore holds that he died on his birthday, aged just fitly two years.
Will lived a great deal in that half century; he was a prolific writer and had something of a reputation as a philanderer as well. His work was well received and respected in his own lifetime, but it was in the nineteenth century that his popularity rose to lofty heights. His works have now been translated and performed in every major living language across the world and he's generally accepted as the greatest ever English writer. It seems highly fitting that the birthday of the nation's bard should fall on the same day as the feast of the patron saint.
If your only experience of Shakespeare is of cramming unappetising and dry chunks at school, uninspired by a bored supply teacher attempting drama by pitching their nasal drone slightly higher, do give him another go. My fondness for Shakespeare has grown and evolved since any formal English literature studies ended and as my adult life has unfolded. Amid any speculation about Will's personal life, his sexuality and promiscuity, his political leanings and religious beliefs (his mother, Mary Arden, was certainly a devout Catholic), there's much more to the excellent wordsmith than initially greets the schoolkid's reluctant eye.
Themes of passion and sensuality, loyalty and guilt, ambition and mercy, prejudice and reconciliation all shout, whisper or sing through his works. His wisdom is apparently borne of his own very human foibles; his wit holds the wry humour of one who recognises his foolishness. Aside from the beauty of some of the sonnets, there's a timeless relevance to "Romeo & Juliet", "Othello", "Richard III", "The Merchant of Venice", "Macbeth".... I was twelve years old when I first read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and it still feels as magical to me today:"Look in the almanac; find out moonshine."

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god."

"No more be grieved at that which thou hast done: 

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud." 

"Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,

How to divide the conquest of thy sight." 

"He jests at scars, that never felt a wound." 

"What is your substance, whereof are you made, 

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?" 

"Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, 

Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,

Some in their garments though new-fangled ill; 

Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse." 

"Thy love is better than high birth to me." 

"All the world's a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players; 

They have their exits and their entrances; 

And one man in his time plays many parts." 

"The course of true love never did run smooth.” 

"Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires." 

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." 

"Expectation is the root of all heartache." 

"Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove." 

"Nothing is so common as the desire to be remarkable." 

"Sit by my side, and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger." 

"Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers." 

"If there is a good will, there is great way." 

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 

Rough-hew them how we will." 

"No sooner met but they looked; 

No sooner looked but they loved; 

No sooner loved but they sighed; 

No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; 

No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; 

And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage." 

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." 

"There is a tide in the affairs of men 

Which, taken at the flood, 

Leads on to fortune 

ommitted; 

All the voyage of their lives

Are bound in shallows and in miseries." 

"How far that little candle throws his beams! 

So shines a good deed in a weary world." 

"Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck; 

And yet methinks I have Astronomy." 

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves." 

"God has given you one face, and you make yourself another." 

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; 

The valiant never taste of death but once." 

"Better three hours too soon than a minute too late."

"But Oh, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes." 

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be." 

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice." 

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." 

"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." 

"My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy." 

"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself." 

"Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered." 

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be." 

"I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed." 

"This above all; to thine own self be true." 

"Who will believe my verse in time to come, 

If it were filled with your most high deserts?"

"Everyday I Write the Book" Elvis Costello (acoustic)

"No legacy is so rich as honesty." 

(Will Shakespeare)

In black and white

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life."

(Golda Meir)

(All photos: Gigi, album) My Dad Tony with Mum in his native Belgium.

Today is the anniversary of my Dad's passing and he's now been apart from this seen world for more than half of my lifetime. One of the things I remember most strongly about him is laughter and indeed his laugh. For a man who was not tall and who was non-confrontational and contemplative by nature, Dad's laugh was big, sudden and random. He was generally softly spoken but he laughed like Sid James. American writer Anne Lamott once said that laughter is "carbonated holiness": I can see my Dad was a very spiritual man who was capable of great joy in small things.
There was an honesty in Dad's laugh. So often, I'm aware of manufactured giggles and mannered groans. Hunour these days often seems so structured and sophisticated, even class conscious. I've inherited Dad's very out-of-the-box sense of humour; it encompasses the bizarre and the slapstick and the everyday ironic. I often open up one of his belly laughs; my mother used to think it was something of a curse in a woman but now I feel it's a blessing; my Dad's little route-finder for joyfulness.
My Dad was a deep thinking and well read man but was completely free of pretension; he had no real material aspirations either, although he always wanted to do the best for my mother, and later on, for my sister and me. My Dad may have blushed a little bit about Brigitte Bardot, Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey) and that blonde bird from Abba, but Mum was the love of his life. My Mum was aware that he'd been quite inexperienced romantically before her and he seemed to wear his faithfulness like his favourite tweed teaching jacket. 

He'd been nearly halfway into a monastery when he met Mum; I can see how the tranquility and humility of the monastic life had appealed to my father. Lord knows what they would have made of his laugh. My father settled into teaching, interpreting and translating. His little study at home in south London was packed with books, newspapers, postcards from various monasteries and his cassettes of Gregorian Chant. Mum sometimes despaired of his lack of personal ambition later in life, but I realise Dad was always aware of the bigger picture from his little corner in it. It sounds cheesy, but he had high hopes for the world.

"Conscience is God present in man."

(Victor Hugo)

Dad with my sister.

After Dad died, I felt I envied my sister the quality one-to-one time she had with him when she was little. Once the family left Belgium for London and I was born, my Dad was always working; never less than two jobs and sometimes as many as four. When I was about seven years old, Mum would often go out on Saturdays, from lumchtime until the shops closed, with my Auntie Barbara and my sister, who was then fifteen going on twenty five (complete with heels and Audrey Hepburn cigarette holder). Still with yellow plaits and plastered knees, I felt very un-grown up and initially very left out: my Dad would be in his study for most of the day, translating and marking students' papers. But it became an easy habit that my Dad would emerge in time for the football results; even though Dad's idea of sport was "It's a Knockout"). He would make beans on toast or grilled kippers (these were the days when I couldn't even spell vegetarianism) and strong, sweet tea and we would watch "Doctor Who" together.
It occurs to me now that we didn't say very much; I would watch the good Doctor avidly while my Dad chuckled or tutted. He never picked up a newspaper or a book or looked bored. It was hugely comfortable and comforting just to sit quietly. I've realised across the years just how like my father I am. I love to laugh, I love music, colour and cleverness, but sometimes it's just lovely to be still and safe in your own company or with someone close.

"Laughter is the sound of the soul dancing. My soul probably looks like Fred Astaire." 

(Jared Kintz)

In Northern Ireland: Dad with his Poirot-style moustache, with my sister holding one of the baby cousins; my cousins Lucy and Charlie Joe are in front of him. I'm playing with my hair as Mum looks on from the doorway.

I'll acknowledge that I was usually described as being academically bright; it was quietly anticipated by my parents that I would probably follow Dad and become a teacher of some variety. I was never the kind of little girl who said she wanted to be an air hostess or even a princess. I wanted to be Tarzan's Jane at one point and then of course Dr Who's next lovely assistant. When I was in my early teens, at convent school and also having gone through all my preliminary dance exams, I announced that I wanted to be a nun or a ballerina. My Mum was exasperated and said I would do neither; that I was an eejit and would have to speak to my father. He was very calm about it all and didn't appear phased by the propositions of having a daughter in cloisters or on stage in tights. Having asked me why I felt I should or could do either, he simply said that from his point of view, it appeared that I could be a dancer and still pray, but that he didn't think there was a whole lot of pirouetting in most convents. He also told me I didn't have to be anything, but that I should try to do something with my life. He told me I didn't need to do anything other people might think of as "big" just for the sake of it. My Dad liked Victor Hugo's concise eloquence; he felt that death was really nothing, but not to have lived your life must be terrible.
Although he was a non-judgmental man, rights and wrongs were black and white to my father; he was assured of his own responses and responsibilities. He had a generosity of spirit and a talent for people that I feel made it very difficult to dislike him. Certainly, Dad didn't seem to have a bad word to say about anyone, although his sense of injustice was relentless. I hope I've inherited some of the latter at least: I take it as a compliment when I'm dismissed as an "effing do-gooder". 
I haven't done anything big with my life and may never do. I can see now that my Dad could have been a writer, but he was essentially content with what some might have called the minutiae of his life. In the Great Scheme of Things for other folk, my Dad may not have done anything big: his home and family became his vocation. Yet after he died, I discovered Dad had funded several students in Africa so they could change their lives. His letters to various publications about injustice in Northern Irish politics brought him to the attention of both the paramilitaries and Scotland Yard. He was regularly sent jokes by Bishop Desmond Tutu; they carried on corresponding after Dad taught the bishop languages. Dad called him Des. And Des has that same unexpectedly raucous laugh that Dad had, that delightful burst of animation in the midst of such gentleness.
I once described my Dad as a mixture of Desmond Tutu, Richard Briers and Hercules Poirot, but essentially he was very much his own person. I know now you can't be true to another person or to your God without being true to yourself. Because of Dad, some things will always be very black and white to me: love, truth, faith, justice. For a quiet, not-tall guy, my father probably had all the biggest things covered.
When I was little, my Dad would often play records on Sunday afternoons; music that both he and Mum had been moved by over the years. In between the Irish Rebel Songs, Edith Piaf, Jim Reeves and Abba, there would usually be The Seekers; two songs in particular. Since both my parents died, I can't hear "The Carnival is Over" without dissolving. On the other hand, I've never found their version of Tom Springfield's "Another You" anything other than joyful. It sounds like an affirmation; I always feel it reminded my parents of how they met. It reminds me of how I still want to live my life. Sometimes. things really can be that simple.

"Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."

(Desmond Tutu)

"Another You"  The Seekers

"If they gave me a fortune

My treasure would be small;

I could lose it all tomorrow

And never mind at all;

But if I should lose your love dear,

I don't know what I'll do

For I know I'll never find another you."

(Tom Springfield)

Funny thing, charity...

"As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others."

(Sam Levenson)

There is a Hebrew word for "charity" which is "tzedakah"; it literally translates as JUSTICE. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of "Red Nose Day" (RND), the highlight and major appeal day of British charity "Comic Relief". The charity was founded in 1985 by comedian Lenny Henry and scriptwriter Richard Curtis, in response to the famine in Ethiopia. It was launched on Christmas Day, from a refugee camp in Sudan. The charity's maintained aim is to bring about positive, lasting change in the lives of disadvantaged people, investing in work that addresses immediate needs and tackles the root causes of poverty and injustice. It's maintained principle is that every pound donated is spent on charitable projects; all operating costs and salaries are covered by corporate sponsors or any interest earned on collected funds before they're distributed.

RND was launched on 5th February 1988 as a national day of comedy and corporate and personal fundraising. The day traditionally culminates in a BBC telethon. It appears that we need comic, light relief to stem the deluge of heart-breaking films showing life and death in what we too readily refer to as the Third World. More than a quarter of a century after the images of famine on an apocalyptic scale flickered on our screens, accompanied by appropriately emotive pop music, we are still being asked to give. 
Personally, I wish I had a pound for every time I've heard someone moan: "the famine's still there, so giving five, ten, twenty years ago didn't do any good". Today, there other children starving; so many of those featured in previous RND films and documentaries will have died. Hunger is as naturally occurring as greed and lust. You and I will probably "feel" hungry at some point during every day throughout our lives,  yet will have no comprehension of what hunger actually is.
People don't volunteer to be born poor or in disadvantaged, stricken or war-torn regions. Good fortune places us this side of the TV screen. For years, I watched the RND telethon with my Mum. Invariable at some point during the evening we would both be in tears and she would say "Phone now", asking me to also donate on her behalf, from a basic, unsupplemented state pension. It always moved me that Mum, by no means a saint, would give to people in parts of the world she had never learned about in school and couldn't name, even as someone whose own income and expectations seemed so restricted. 

I've made a bit of a song and dance about not being able to have a glass of wine or slice of sticky-toffee cake for my birthday, falling part way through Lent. The blatant truth is that I chose to give up those things, and for a very limited time. With two hands and fresh vegetables to cook with, the want of cake and Pinot Grigio will never kill me. I'm ashamed that I frequently say I'm too broke to go for a meal out, to get the bathroom sorted, to go on holiday; I have no real concept of what it means to be broken.
Of course Comic Relief funds projects "locally" too; with a growing reputation for initiatives responding to and educating against domestic abuse. But as I grow older, the world somehow seems a much smaller place. I find the whole "Charity begins at home" plea tedious and quite despicable. This earth houses us all, but supports some much more comfortably than others. There is only one world, however much we spout about the first, second or third. You don't need to be a God-botherer or a tree-hugger to appreciate the obscenity of any child wasting away for the want of water, rice, mosquito nets or basic medicines; it's irrelevantl where that child was born or who to.
Over the years, Comic Relief has raised well over £750 million; last night's telethon total will add another record breaking £75 million. Obviously we can continue to donate throughout the rest of the year.
I'm not a fan of the "Reality TV" phenomenon: I think it panders to and then feeds off the worst excesses and inadequacies of human nature, turning it as entertainment. Generally, it's cheaply made television which makes celebrities of those who shout the most. Last night, I watched the most raw, damning reality TV of all. A tiny African boy, ironically called Victor, expired on camera. His parents couldn't afford to pay for the morgue, so the local hospital allowed them to lay him in their laundry over-night. Wrapped up on the shelf, he could have been just another bundle of soiled rags. A fiver could have kept him alive: half a pizza, less than a pint of Guinness, a couple of goes on the lottery.

"You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. 

It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them." 

(St Vincent de Paul)

www.rednoseday.com

"People Help The People"  Birdy

"While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary." 

( Chinua Achebe)

The dimming of a day

Many thanks to my lovely friend Frances for the modern parable attached here. At the dimming of a day fraught with petty irritations and draining board disasters, this found me a decent reason to cry. 

Our lives are made up of so many little joys and sadnesses; meaningless dots to others who may not take the time to join them up as they chase other invisible patterns. Inevitably, the dots become fewer for us all; one tiny, random act of kindness can give meaning to someone's bigger picture. It may even help get you round your own page.

I've been listening to Mary Black's cover of "The Dimming of the Day" a lot recently as my own old house splutters more leaks, creaks and cracks; it seems to sit very gently here.

The Cab Ride - 

an awesome reminder of why we're here. 

"I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I walked to the door and knocked.
'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her nineties stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it; like somebody out of a 1940's movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.
The apartment looked as if no-one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knick-knacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

'Would you please carry my bag out to the car?' she said.
I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the old lady.
She took my arm and we walked out slowly toward the cab. She kept thanking me for my kindness.
'It's nothing,' I told her,
'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated'.
'Oh, you're a good boy' she said.
When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked: 'Could you drive through downtown?'
'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly.
'Oh, I don't mind,' she said, 'I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice.'
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.
'I don't have any family left,' she continued softly, 'I know I don't have very long.'
I quietly reached over and switched the meter off.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived, when they were newlyweds.
She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she danced when she was a girl. Sometimes, she'd ask me to slow down at a particular building or corner, and then stared into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said: 'I'm tired. Let's go now.'
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.
It was a low building, a small convalescent home. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They must have been expecting her.
I took the one small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
'How much do I owe you?' she asked, reaching into her purse.
'Nothing.'
'You have to make a living,' she said.
'There are other passengers,' I responded.
Almost without thinking, I bent to give her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said, 'Thank you.'
I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dimming light. Behind me, a door shut. 

It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk.
What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware; beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one. 

People may not remember exactly what it was you did or what you said - but they will always remember how you made them feel." 

"The Dimming of the Day" Mary Black 

God's tap on man's shoulder

"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder." 

(Charles Morgan)

My friend Suzanne, who's known me for at least half of my life and cares about me deeply, called me a "singleton" last year. As a hopeless romantic, I was quite stung by this (affectionate) description: no-one who loves the idea of being in love and identifies themselves with loving others wants to be seen as unloved. She also told me I should have been born in medieval times, when princesses lived in ivory towers and knights were bold. I don't believe the flats that have sprung up at the end of my little street really qualify as an ivory tower, and although there are some very fine and bold men in hosiery and thigh-high boots around Brighton, my guess is they're not out to dally with a damsel.

St Valentine's Day is, of course, an exercise in canny consumerism, exploiting the poetry of flattery and the currency of insecurity.The Catholic Church doesn't even fully verify that there was indeed one saintly Valentine whose story peculiarly lends him to the patronage of romantic love. There have been several sainted Valentines in fact: today's feast day may be an amalgamated celebration of their kindly and chivalrous traits.
The Ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia was devoted to love and fertility and occurred around the middle of February. By all accounts, the festival could be a bit of a riot, sometime even involving sacrifices; it was abolished by Pope Gelasius in the fifth century. It's been claimed that during Lupercalia, men drew women's names out of a jar at random, then coupled with them, probably just as randomly. Hmm, not a whole lot of chivalrous love going on there then.The practice was reintroduced in the Middle Ages, but in a more modified way: names would be drawn to initiate courting couples; the origin of today's guess-who-it-is Valentine cards?
The earliest recorded association of today's date with romantic or courtly love is credited to one Geoffrey Chaucer in "The Parlement of Foules", in 1392. "Courtly love" applied the language of the law courts to the intrigues and rituals of attraction and romance; courtship. Around 1400, Princess Isabel of Bavaria established a "High Court of Love" in Paris, dealing with love contracts, betrayals and indiscretions and violence against women. The court was founded on 6th January, the feast day of a Bavarian saint named Valentin. Today, we have the Jeremy Kyle Show.
The medieval concept of courtly love was noble and chivalrous; although it was usually conducted in secret. And it wasn't expected to be practiced between husbands and wives: marriage was often a detached, contractual matter involving allegiances, land and titles. Essentially, courtly love embraced erotic desire and spiritual attainment; it was at once both illicit and morally idealistic. It was innocence, tenderness, devotion and passion. I agree Suzie; get me to an ivory tower and quick. And yet this evening, on a feast steeped in the traditions of erotic love at it's purest and most self-sacrificing, my local tavern is proudly advertising it's "Valentine's Day Speed Dating Massacre". With reduced booze. And scampi. Dear Lord. Such things can only have a kindly-hearted singleton running for the chamomile and honey, clutching "The Complete Robert Burns".
Whatever the origins and associations of the feast, whether there was one St Valentine or twenty, the truth is that love and romance can be very much alive today. Love isn't restricted to an era, a class or to dramatic situations. It lives in hearts and minds, in familiarity and the every-day, irrespective of ivory towers or high-rises. Like Kindness and Fidelity, two of it's offspring, it's often depicted as a weakness or feyness nowadays, particularly in men, but I agree with Gandhi that love is the prerogative of the brave. There's a feeling of kinship in romantic love that empowers and engenders a will to protect as much as to be supported. The bonds of true love may be imperceptible, but they can be inexorably binding.
Do I believe all this? Yes. Do I still want to be princess-lifted out of my own little ivory tower? Yep. Did I get any Valentine's cards today? Er...no. Suzanne would say I don't put myself "out there", although I dread to think where "there" may be. Certainly not my local boozer. And like most so-called singletons, there's a lot going on in here. I'm a bit in love with where I live, I love my friends and family, I'm soppy with next door's cat and Jonathan the Seagull (treats the back garden like a hotel); I love my faith in other people and in God. I rather like my blog. I still love the idea of being in love; I believe in marriage, not just as a social institution but as a sacrament. There are a lot of us about; intelligent, practical, independent people who believe that love is for every day, not just for 14th February.
Many wonderful people have spoken beautifully about love in all it's guises of course, infinitely more eloquently than I ever could. I've included a luxury selection of quotes here; like chocolates for the soul, the sort you should never give up for Lent. I've also included Van Morrison's lovesong "Have I Told you Lately"; he wrote it less than twenty five years ago, but it's rightly acclaimed alongside the works of Burns and Dante. Originally written as a prayer, it's just timeless; it will probably remain one of the most played wedding waltzes for the next few decades.
If love didn't appear to come through you front door today, or even pop up on your iPhone or laptop screen, may it find you in the pockets of wherever you call home, and may you greet it in the corners of your smile.

*Happy Valentine's Day, Ms Suzanne Pinkstone!*

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." 

(Lao Tzu) 

"Where there is Love there is Life." 

(Mahatma Gandhi) 

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge." 

(Thomas Carlyle) 

"Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit." 

(Khalil Gibran) 

"Love is a friendship set to music." 

(Joseph Campbell) 

"My love is like a red, red rose 

That's newly sprung in June: 

My love is like the melody 

That's sweetly played in tune." 

(Robert Burns) 

"Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow." 

(James M. Barrie) 

"Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat." 

(Ben Hecht) 

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." 

(Mother Teresa) 

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." 

(Martin Luther King Jr) 

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." 

(Reinhold Niebuhr) 

"I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit." 

(Khalil Gibran) 

"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another." 

(Thomas Merton) 

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope." 

(Maya Angelou) 

"A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love." 

(St Basil) 

"For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self." 

(John O'Donohue) 

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls." 

(Khalil Gibran)

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." 

(G K Chesterton) 

"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age." 

(Anais Nin) 

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." 

(Aristotle) 

"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love." 

(St Francis of Assisi) 

"Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds." 

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) 

"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition." 

(John O'Donohue) 

"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds." 

(Will Shakespeare) 

"For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have."

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery) 

"The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others." 

(Vincent Van Gogh) 

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

(Victor Hugo) 

"Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day." 

(Barbara de Angelis) 

"Real intimacy is a sacred experience." 

(John ODonohue) 

"The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one." 

(Honore de Balzac) 

"Had we never lov'd sae kindly, 

Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 

Never met - or never parted - 

We had ne'er been broken hearted." 

(Robert Burns) 

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." 

(Dr Seuss) 

"Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail." 

(Kinky Friedman) 

"You are like nobody since I love you." 

(Pablo Neruda) 

"Have I Told You Lately" Van Morrison

"Oh the morning sun in all its glory 

Greets the day with hope and comfort too; 

And you fill my life with laughter, 

You can make it better, 

Ease my troubles, that's what you do. 

There's a love that's divine 

And it's yours and it's mine,

Like the sun; 

At the end of the day 

We should give thanks and pray 

To the One."