A thread on kindness. I see a worrying trend of people thinking that kindness is having to buy people things. I am someone who has been reliant on kindness and understanding for a huge proportion of my adult life and this is what I have learnt.

Sometimes kindness is when people buy you things, but it is the times when there is something that you have really needed, or it is a tiny thing, a card, a homemade present, something that makes you feel people care. It is food when you need it, it is help with a bill.

But (in my 45 years of experience) it is invariably the things that cost nothing that matter the most. It is the person who allows you to offload, the person who messages occasionally to check you are ok, it is the person who makes the effort to make you laugh.

In this lockdown it is the people who have checked in and had a conversation that are kind, the people who share a joke because they know you’re struggling a bit. More often than not it is the people no one knows about, because they don’t need to make a song and dance out of it.

They are the people who wake you up in the morning with a happy thought, who virtually watch tv with you, who ring for a chat, who spend their days with you virtually. It’s made me realise who is important, but also that kindness and support really does cost absolutely nothing.

None of that is meant to be preachy, just an observation that kindness is all around us. We just need to notice that it is there.