Just An Ordinary Nativity?

‘Immensity, cloistered in thy dear womb’ 

John Donne, ‘Nativity’, (1610)

Last week, I saw tinsel haloed angels preening in the front row, swinging their net skirts back and forth as they listened for the words they knew so they could join the singing with angelic gusto. I saw shepherds use their crooks to mischievously prod at fellow actors and Bethlehem villagers emotionally overcome, not by the miraculous birth but because they missed their mum. I clapped brave little soloists and tried not to be too distracted by deafening microphone feedback and an absurd height disparity between narrators.

How to Get Rid of the Worry Monster

I had it in my hand ready to take to the till. A furry, striped, google-eyed monster with a zip mouth and an empty tummy ready to eat up all the worries. For two whole minutes, I did actually think this was a good idea to buy as a present, the idea being that your child can write down what they’re worried about and then stuff it into the worry monster’s mouth who ‘eats’ it up and makes the worry go away. The multi coloured little chap walked straight into my head and very nearly had me walking out the shop door with him under my arm when, all of a sudden, I paused and said to my shopping buddy of the day i.e. husband,

How To Have Resilience

Photo by Anish Nair on Unsplash

Thoughts after a prolonged discussion on child protection and safeguarding, a unit covered in the college course for classroom assistants.

“We need to build resilience,” said the tutor.

The words dropped down dead onto the classroom floor. No-one picked them up to put on paper. The sheer inadequacy of them in the face of what we’d been discussing for a couple of weeks seemed like trying to use hand sanitiser as an antidote for blood poisoning.