With Great Pleasure

One of the very best programmes on BBC Radio Four is With Great Pleasure, each week a celebrity treats the audience to writing and extracts that they are fond of. Today was the turn of Jude Kelly, who I don’t know anything about at all. She presents a treasure chest of varied writing which I really enjoyed and would like to share – especially the poem towards the end, written by her own daughter, Caroline Bird (poem starts 23.08 minutes in) With Great Pleasure

Keep your heart clean

This isn’t about health. This is about one of the young men who spent 6 years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp; I only picked up the end of the radio program about him. He now lives in Saudi Arabia and has recently married. The journalist asked him why he still wore American style clothes after all that had happened to him. The young man explained that he did not hold a grudge against his captors. He explained that it is important to keep your heart clean. I understood exactly what he meant. It’s important not to wallow in the negative aspects of the past. Look forward to the future with hope.

A lesson for us all.

Allan Ahlberg is 70

I was so pleased to hear the Allan Ahlberg interview on BBC radio 4 earlier today. I loved reading his and Janet’s books to my children when they were small. I even read Funnybones in English to my French pupils and they loved it. You don’t need to translate some things!

The interview will be up for a week so don’t miss it. He sounds like a lovely man and is really funny