632This true gentleman used to work with me on a newspaper, and shares my love of Malta. He sent this picture in, with the message: "A young friend, wiser than her years give her any right to be, came out with my SOTM about a year ago and the simple sense of it stuck fast.

"That said, I'm not sure she or anyone else I know puts it into practice consistently. Sometimes circumstances dictate that the something nice we feel like saying won't be taken the right way by the recipient. Even so, I think the world would be a better place if we all tried to follow this way of thinking.

"My colleague, photographer-singer-songwriter Hannah Brackenbury, kindly took the picture for me (days before leaving to start a new career in Brighton) in the Old English Garden at Elvaston Castle, near Derby, a favourite haven of mine for going on 40 years."