Have you ever been overlooked, not chosen for something which you really wanted, something which could have been life affirming? Maybe a fantastic job prospect, or a key member of an important team. It can be quite disheartening, maybe even soul destroying especially if you had set your heart on whatever it might be. I’ll bet the overriding emotion at the time was disappointment, maybe some resentment and maybe even some feeling of a lack of self-worth. It has happened to me a few times...

You know how sometimes a word can be used in everyday parlance to effectively replace the word which actually describes an action or a thing? Let me explain…..So for example, when we clean our carpets we often say we are hoovering our carpets. We don’t say we are sharking our carpets, or ewbanking them or even dysoning them. I wonder how many of us actually do say that we are vacuuming them? The act of vacuuming has become so glibly known as the act of hoovering, when of course Hoover is a...

I’m sure at some time or another we have all had a beautiful piece of pottery or ceramic or porcelain which has been dropped and broken. Heartbreaking. Devastating, especially if said item was an heirloom or a piece of nostalgia. We try to get the pieces back together, align them just right, use minimal glue, but strong glue, and hope that the join is invisible. That the item looks as it was before the break. I’ve done that, for sure. A number of times, with, I have to say, little success in...