The devil AKA Satan.

I'm now in Costa's with a cappuccino (extra hot, which makes it last longer, me being a cheapskate at heart) and I find the place therapeutic. I get the impression that many here on the forum are put off by a wall of text. Busy lives, always something to do next that cannot wait. So a soundbite will do.

"How r u"?

"Great" (not really, feeling shit actually, on the brink of suicide but hey, you don't really wanna know)

That's the way it seems to go. Fortunately I am retired and have time to think - not always the best policy I admit given the thoughts that can come. But often rewarding. Contemplation. Reflection. Who am I? and suchlike. Which reminds me of Neddy Seagoon being asked what he was doing down in the coal cellar. "Well, everybody gotta be somewhere!" he said. Dear old Spike Milligan, who had his own mental health problems. Who am I, where am I. What do I do next? as Spike would ask at the end of the sketch.

Picking up on my opening post, of smiles and the kind acts of strangers, I think that the full beauty of this world is open to the very "lowest" - a "little child shall lead them" as the Good Book says; and as G K Chesterton once said, "great things are seen from the valleys, only small things from the heights". The instinctive love of a mother for her child can trump all the books on ethics. This is not sentimentality. It, at least for me, is ingrained into the fabric of reality. Once, some time ago now, not long after my own mother died of dementia, I was suffering from a couple of years of depression. It was Christmas Eve and I had been running around the town buying the last things for Christmas. I knew I needed a little sketch pad for my daughter, then six, which I had promised to get. But my pockets were empty and those were the days when Credit Cards were quite new, and to pay with one involved machines, signatures, and "tut tuts" in the queue behind you. I picked up a pad and lined up in the long queue and looked with trepidation at the very harassed looking young lady who was serving. Eventually it was my turn......."Sorry, I have no cash left, can I use my credit card?" If that young girl had snatched the pad and looked at me with enmity, in the state I was in then, who knows? How deep can depression go? Where does any road end? But no. She took the pad and smiled, a beautiful smile, and said "I think we are all out of cash now". Even now, thinking back, it almost reduces me to tears - of gratitude. I have always remembered that smile. Which cost nothing yet was worth everything.

Anyway, I've waffled on enough. My apologies for the wall of text. I hope no one finds it too off putting.