Yesterday, driving back from dropping Tallulah at a party I was listening to PM on Radio Four. I love Eddie Mair. Even when the news is dire, which it invariably is, Eddie is just the person to deliver it. His interviewing technique is particularly excellent (take heed, Jeremy Paxman).

I was moved to tears last night, listening to him interview a woman called Sarah Jenkins, whose daughter, Emily was blown up in the 7/7 bombings. The phrase that came to mind was grace under pressure, and not just because it’s an Elbow song. The dignity she was afforded and expressed in the interview made it so poignant, and very powerful indeed.

Her refusal to give in to hate, to do something constructive, to make the absolute best of her situation and remember Emily not as a victim of terrorism, but simply as her daughter who died, was magnificent.

It made me…

Dear Frank

Can I call you Frank? This is just pastor to pastor. Feel free to call me Peter. Anyway, I have to say I was flattered when I learned that your Decision America Tour took a detour off the beaten path to call upon us “small community churches.” We are nothing if not small. We seat 30-40 on a good Sunday. And we are a century old fixture of our small community. Most often we are overlooked and overshadowed by mega-churches and politically influential religious voices like your own. We don’t hold a candle to an auditorium filled with the music of a one hundred voice choir led by professional musicians. We probably will never be recognized in any nationally syndicated media. After all, we don’t do anything really “newsworthy.” We just preach the good news of Jesus Christ; love one another the best we can (which sometimes isn’t…

My brother was in hospital for surgery today.

He’s had a kidney stone for months. It is one of those things the NHS no longer fix in the early stages. They hope it will just ‘go away.’

I understand this. There is no money, and if you know anything at all about the NHS you will know that they now routinely employ what they call rationing. This means that they do not stop offering certain treatments/drugs, but they do make the criteria to get them almost impossible to achieve. Kidney stones, along with hernias, are things that are often on hospital trust ration lists.

To be fair, sometimes people do pass kidney stones without any help,  but sometimes they don’t and in my brother’s case, he didn’t. In fact his kidney stone got bigger and bigger and worse and worse. In fact, the drugs they gave him several months ago which they swore…

It is day four in the Big Brexit house.

I had hoped after Friday’s absolute catastrophe of a day that the country might somehow magically rally over the weekend. I mean, when you plunge your country into possible ruin on the promise of a golden future that will allow it to rise like a phoenix from the flames, you have a plan, right?

As it turns out, you don’t. The only person that seems to have any plan at all, and be acting on it rather than just spouting meaningless Churchillian rhetoric is Nicola Sturgeon, and I can’t even vote for her.

I was distraught and angry on Friday. I had hoped to feel better by today. Instead I am running on barely controlled rage and getting more enraged by the moment.

Here are a few things I am furious about:

Firstly, leave voters telling me to calm down. I’m sorry…

Venom and vitriol. All over my news feed. All over the tv news. All over the internet.

Everywhere.

The reason?

A silverback gorilla was shot by zoo staff after a 4-year old child managed to get into the enclosure. I’m sure you’ve seen the story and perhaps seen the video footage of the child’s foot in the grip of the 450lb ape.

Let me just get something straight here before I hop up on my little soap box.

I love animals.

I love animals and always have. I have been fascinated and enthralled by Jane Goodall’s life story since childhood. I read every book in the library about Jane. I also read every book that I could get my hands on about dolphins, sharks, whales and other marine creatures. I imagined tramping through jungles, as Goodall had, chronicling and re-defining what we know about animals. I dreamed about animal research…