In other news....allow yourself a smile.

In the papers. On the air. All over the screen. And maybe in your life. Achingly sad and disturbing news. It`ll always be there, and the day it stops affecting you is the day you`ve lost all compassion.

But if you move your head a half turn ... jewels that keep on shining in your life: or the people you meet, the places you go...glint a little, catch your eye...and give you a smile.

I really hope you`ve had some of those moments this week. Just for the hell of it....here are mine:

--Seeing our eldest daughter collect her degree. And realising I was holding my breath with anxiety as she headed for the stage, just as I`d done in her first school nativity with a home made tinsel halo wound precariously round her head. This time, the stakes were higher. And so was the mortar board. Way higher. Perched less than securely on silky hair. The slippy graduation gown resting lightly on her shoulders was actually hiding a backless dress *for later*. Would it stay, or would it go now....Oh...and the steps to the stage had to be negotiated in four inch stilettos. Yeh, but like the 2:1 BA Hons...she did it; and left the amazingly uplifting ceremony at Greenwich University with hundreds more young graduates and their families, beaming, and brimming with pride.

--Watching our youngest daughter share that pride at her sister`s achievements; and the thrill of being part of her big day.Then a day later, hearing her on the phone bubbling with excitement about the part she`d got, after a string of tough auditions and callbacks, for her college show.

--Standing beside St Paul`s Cathedral this week, in total awe as ever at its beauty, marvelling at how Sir Christopher Wren and the hundreds of men involved in its construction in the late 1600s ever achieved it.   Then noticing the sign for the old Roman route of Watling Street over the road, and knowing that if I followed its path ...it`d more or less get me home to Shropshire.

--Listening politely to the beauty counter assistant trying to flog me a pot of face cream containing *actual diamonds* for £80; happy that mine`s a fiver from Aldi.

--Getting whistled at in Greenwich Market (face cream must be working, then?!)

--Seeing a train conductor called John on Virgin`s 1343 from Euston yesterday bothering to stop and say hello to every passenger. And smiling.

--Hearing the ticket seller at Greenwich station say he loved my purse, but adding "not that I`m camp or nuffink"..!

--Battling through driving rain and peasouper fog in France late on Saturday night with a teasingly unreliable Satnav to find dear friends had turned on the lights and heating at my destination for my arrival--and had left a big bag of walnuts on the kitchen table too.

--Back in England, finding there was more fog on my way home up the M40. Cheered hugely by the sight of  a tiny Fiat inching past with a registration plate which included the word *Yay* !

--Sitting at the kitchen table with coffee and toast this morning with a million things to do, but all the time in the world to do them.


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