Just when you reach the point.....

of despair.

This was the sentence I intended to begin this blog with, for a very good reason. You know when you read the papers and watch the news on telly, and then you chat with your neighbour or with a colleague, and all you get is despair and despondency?

You reach a point when you ask yourself "is there any goodness left?".

Just in case you had reached that point, I'm here to tell you that "YES", there is.

Yesterday morning, She With The Short Fat Hairy Legs dragged me off to Sheffield with her, to Crystal Peaks shopping centre to be precise. It isn't the biggest centre in the country, but it is a fair size and therefore presents to me a far greater walking challenge than I could accept. Therefore, my little shopping buggy, electric go-cart, dune buggy, speed machine - call it what you will, was broken apart and loaded into the boot of the car.

On arrival, the dune buggy was reassembled ready for my use. Now, I have a bright yellow coat with reflective stripes for use with the buggy. This serves many purposes; it makes me a highly visible object to other street users, it keeps the rain and the wind out and it has fairly large pockets.

I donned my coat, carefully making sure that my little shoulder-hung card/phone wallet was safely tucked away, and orf we went, into the Shopping Centre, firstly to find Her Dad and sisters at the little cafe where we were to have a little brekky and a natter.

After that, She went shopping - here there and everywhere, the end resuly being that my little dune buggy was loadede with bags hung from the handlebars, in the basket, on the platform and so on. I must have looked a rare sight, me in the yellow and white reflective striped jacket and all those coloured carrier bags.

We were on our last run, with one call to make before our exit and were headed for the Sky tv gondola where they were flogging their services. I thought they might be able to answer a question I had.

Anyway, there we were, me running slowly since the buggy will run faster than She walks, whereas when I'm afoot, She is the faster of the two. We were almost where we wanted to be when I felt a tap on my left shoulder. I turned my head, expecting to see one of my sisters-in-law, but no, no sight of them, so I carried on.

It was a gentleman who came up behind me who had tapped me, to tell me that I was about to lose something on the floor. Sure enough, trailing on the tiled floor, was my card/phone wallet, held tenuously by its thin strap.

Picking it, I could see the strands of thread where the strap had come away from the wallet proper and it was only the pressure of the big jacket now holding the other end inside its folds.

I called 'thank you very much' to the gentleman, but all I could see was a departing back amongst many, disappearing into the maze of the market. Since the man had come up from behind and had carried on walking as I tended to the recovery of the item, I didn't get to see who he was and could not recognise him again.

Thank you Sir, whoever you are, you've given me cause to hope that the goodness left in the world is still there, waiting for an opportunity to show itself.