The Daily Pause
A comma, not a full stop — the breath inside the sentence rather than the end of it.
Today
The Daily Question
What smell takes you
straight back somewhere?
Smell gets there before you do.
Cut grass, and you are nine and it is the last week of the holidays. Coal smoke on a cold evening. Your granny's hand cream. Hot tar. A school corridor after floor polish. The inside of a particular car.
You are not remembering, exactly. For a second you are just there again, before you have had time to decide whether you wanted to be.
So — what smell takes you straight back somewhere?
The Middle of the Day
Not yet
The Quiet Hour
Not yet
Who this is
I’m Andrew. A husband, a father, and a funeral director in Belfast.
I also have days I find hard — my mood, my head, and some days just life. Most of them look perfectly ordinary from the outside.
I started this because what helped me on those days was almost never advice. It was one honest sentence at the right moment, or being asked something worth thinking about by someone who actually wanted to hear the answer.
That is all this is trying to be. It is for everyone — whatever you believe, and whatever kind of week you are having.
One thing worth saying plainly. I set what this page is — the voice, the rules, the things it will never do. The three pieces are written to that every morning by a machine, and every quotation is checked before it goes anywhere. Nothing goes out that I would not put my name to.
No judgement. Just love.