Unintentional Poet

My latest 'Thought for the Week' made it into the Lynn News this week - here it is, for anyone who is interested! Finding contentment is something I believe we all struggle with, at times – probably more often than we care to admit! We look at the size of our house, the state of our garden, the ‘perfect-looking’ families, smiling from their Facebook photographs and we feel the discontent stirring within.  What is the answer to this endless conundrum?  How can we find contentment and peace in a world that screams, all the time, that we need the next thing – the best, the biggest, and the brightest? Paul, the writer of the letter to the Philippians, in the Bible, tells us that he managed to “[learn] the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ” I am amazed by this, whenever I read this verse or ponder his story.  Paul was writing this from prison, of all places, and yet was able to declare thi

I wrote this a little while ago, as an attempt at a short story, for a competition.  It didn't win anything, but I thought I would share it here, for anyone who is interested.  It is based on real life, with my Nan, who was a very capable lady and an avid jam-maker, right up until she had a debilitating stroke, last August.  We are still working our way through her stock of jam and, knowing that, soon, we will reach the last jar, is heart-breaking. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story! The Last Jar of Jam It had always felt as though the jam jars had a life-cycle of their own – a perpetual circle of being: Nan would spend hours in her kitchen, humming as she stirred bubbling saucepans and filled jars by the dozen, lined up like soldiers, with matching red and white berets, on the kitchen side board. My boys (her great-grandsons) would charm and beg more jars from her each time we visited, hastily making the desired exchange: a clanking bag of empty jars, for two