Sorting Things Out by Angela Caldin
We’re hoping to move house soon. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But behind that straightforward statement lurks a disturbing state of emotional as well as physical upheaval. I’ve heard it said that moving house ranks with death and divorce as one of the most stressful events in life, and while I think that there must be many worse things than moving, such as serious illness or loss of a job, I can bear witness to the fact that the whole procedure is causing me much angst and turmoil. Difficult Decisions We haven’t exchanged… Read More
On Being a Parent by Angela Caldin
A young mum said to me the other day, talking about her children, ‘I can’t wait until they’re 18 and then I won’t have to worry about them any more.’ She said this in all seriousness and first of all I thought that perhaps I hadn’t heard right. But then I realised that her children were small and that her worries were those associated with small children. She had no idea that as time went on and her children grew up, the issues would change and become more and more intractable. I’m… Read More
Sparring Partners by Trevor Plumbly
It’s that time again. You know, when all those government paid statisticians release their findings on what improved and what didn’t in the past year. It’s always seemed to me to represent a lot of effort for very little direct good. Ministers either crow about the results or promise that the problem will be addressed, but of course political survival demands that bad bits have as short a shelf life as possible, so the placebos are doled out to us and life goes on as usual. Don’t get me wrong, I love… Read More
Aspects of Domestic Violence by Angela Caldin
Startling Statistics I woke in the night not long ago and was listening half-asleep to the radio. Suddenly, I jolted wide awake when I heard the following frightening statistics: two women per week are killed by current or ex-partners, and one in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence of some degree in their lifetime. It is estimated that less than half of all incidents are reported to the police, but they still receive one domestic violence call every minute in the UK. There is no doubt that it is… Read More
Grandparents’ Delight by Angela Caldin
Bucolic Idyll Envisaged When my lovely son-in-law asked if we could look after our three delightful granddaughters for a day, while he and our daughter enjoyed a wine tour on Waiheke Island, we agreed with alacrity. What a blissful win-win arrangement, I thought: we would have the three little ones all to ourselves while their parents had a well-deserved and happy day-out together. But as the day drew nearer, the attractiveness of the prospect began to wane ever so slightly, mainly because the uninterrupted summer sunshine of the last few months was… Read More
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