When spe­cial peo­ple die it’s the end of an era. That per­son need not be a close fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend, it can sim­ply be a favourite author, as hap­pened to me the oth­er week.

The diver­si­ty of authors and books (espe­cial­ly non-Amer­i­can would you believe?!), the top­ics, fic­tion but most­ly non-fic­tion, I have read in recent years con­tin­ues to aston­ish me. I am fre­quent­ly affect­ed by one or more quotes therein.

The Irish author Nuala O’Faolain died this month. I quot­ed her from her book ‘Almost There’ in my Novem­ber 28 2007 blog post and I’ll take the lib­er­ty of quot­ing it again as a form of “thanks for writ­ing and inspir­ing me”:

“Happy chil­dren are those whose par­ents enjoy things with them. Unhap­py chil­dren are those who know that their par­ents’ idea of a good time is being away from them”

Just take a look at any baby who cries a lot ‘for no appar­ent rea­son’ or a young child of 3 or so whose emo­tions seem very close to the sur­face and yet is inca­pable of express­ing him/herself, then check out the par­ents’ behav­iour and you will see how right Nuala O’Faolain was.

Her books are in your local library.