Experience is everything is the mantra at Saga, and I suppose it’s right: even those things you have not enjoyed have formed a part of you (though, I could have done without the Parkinson’s.)
I have lived my life in pursuit of experiences; even those that I would blush to recall publicly have had an influence, and for that I am grateful. I hope the person who knitted the Remembrance Day topper for the gold pillar box in Hay-on-Wye – permanently gold to celebrate Paralympian Josie Pearson – feels the same way. It must have taken weeks to knit. (Have you noticed the way in which smaller communities pay much more attention to the duty of remembrance than metropolitan conurbations? I presume Hay would have sent an ill-fated Pals’ Battalions to war: there was hardly a lamppost in town without a poppy, weeks after Remembrance Sunday.)