Seeker

An act of kindness can be something simple, like an act of courtesy. This morning I went on an adventure. Well, it felt adventurous. I entered a supermarket to do some shopping for the first time since December. It was a relief to find I'd not forgotten the behaviour protocols for Covid risk reduction. I'm grateful that other masked early morning shoppers were careful to observe the 2-metre apart distance rule. How strange that the kindess of courtesy now includes keeping physically distanced from other people. The highlight of today's supermarket trip was provided by the young man working the checkout till. The staff in that particular place are always courteous, but he seemed especially so, going the extra mile in what he said to me and how he looked at me. Even though he was masked, the smile on his face was obvious by his eyes. I give him full marks for courtesy, because today his courteous behaviour felt like a kindness, a lovely gift just for me. That young man's ...

Can dogs be kind? In my Lent series on the theme of kindness, I thought of entitling this post, 'Kindness of Dogs'. I decided that might be an anthropomorphic step too far. My experience of dogs is that they seem to be kinder than cats. If you are a cat lover you may disagree. I think that in a sense dogs can be kind. There are so many examples of loyal dogs doing good things for their owners, being faithful companions. I called this post 'Kindness through dogs' because people can find kindness through dogs, even if that was not the dogs altruistic intention. Going back to my childhood, when I felt miserable there was always comfort to be found in stroking the family dog. Like most dogs our mongrel was sensitive to human moods or sickness. When our children were growing up, our pet labrador was there for any of us not feeling our best. Kindness can be spread through posting images of dogs on social media. During lockdown I have enjoyed seeing photos and videos of the do...

  During Lent, I've decided to post as often as I can about kindness. (See my post of yesterday, Ash Wednesday 2021 .) So today I'm starting with an early memory of how someone was kind to me. It involved plums and plum stones. I was about 4 years old and attending a kindergarten school. Usually I went home for lunch. The day of my plum stone memory was, I believe, the first day that I had lunch at school. It was a hot meal cooked in the school kitchen. The dessert that day was stewed plums. I ate one. It tasted good, but it contained the plum seed, hard as stone. What was I supposed to do with the plum stone? At home I'd been taught to spit the plum stone into my spoon and place the stone on the rim of the pudding bowl. My immediate problem on that 1st day of staying for school lunch was that the school bowls had no rims. My longer term problem was that I was then a rather shy little girl. I didn't dare ask what I should do with the stone. I knew I shouldn't put it...