Posts

Cold-shouldered

My ex-colleague at Accenture came up with the best quip: is my husband tired of being given the cold shoulder? It was soon after Christmas 2015 when I noticed that the intermittent pain in my right arm was getting more frequent. I am right-handed. Went to the GP in January 2016 and for the best part of this year I had been suffering a lot of pain, loss of muscle strength and spent many hours in hospital and clinic waiting rooms. Not nice. I had to give up that bit of my voluntary work which required a lot of note-taking. My right hand was so weak that I could barely sign my name, let alone write. Even working at a computer took a great deal of effort and I had to stop after every hour or so to recuperate. (I took on a new voluntary role to teach 'laptop' to senior citizens. Instead of note-taking, all I had to do was point and talk, and occasionally pressed a button or two. It gels with my desire to help older people cope with loneliness by connecting them via the inter

Nurturing talent

I have been helping out at a children's holiday club run by my church. I have been so amazed by some of the talent shown by my six-year-old charges. One played football very well. A couple of the girls showed superb abilities in their colouring. I was quite taken aback because my son was still drawing stick figures when he was eight or perhaps even ten. His colouring was quite atrocious. No amount of  'colour within the lines' had any effect on him. He dreaded doing art and sport most, I think. With the exception of three-dimensional art. He is fascinated by origami and has created some most spectacular origami structures. When I looked at them -- they connect and can be manipulated and transformed -- I realized that this was not origami as in 'folding art'. This was origami as in 'paper engineering'. Back to these talented young people. I hope that they have the space and support to develop those innate talents that they clearly possess. Jus