Epiphanies

Days are getting longer, very slowly. I’m told it begins on my birthday, 29 December. The sun is setting every day nearer to five. When it sets at five I begin to feel the first intimations of spring. I note there are a few tiny yellow crocuses peeping up through the...

Teddy Bear Blasphemy

Days before the Paris tragedy, for some reason I was thinking about the teddy bear incident in Sudan some years ago. It must have been because Daniel, aged 5, was looking for a name to give to ‘Lisa’s child’. Lisa is his favourite cuddly toy, a lamb who has rapidly...

Jack Frost

At the Christmas Tree Festival in Beverley Minster I instinctively searched for the tree that was glittering white, not for snow, but to be reminded of the glorious patterns Jack Frost painted on window panes in my childhood.  I somehow miss them. They looked like...