No blog today.

Too tired.

Just some trees.

And a face.

Someone I have never met said something very kind to me today, in one of those social networks at which the newspapers like to sneer.

It touched my heart and cheered me up. I suppose that ‘internet can be really nice’ will never make headline news. Much better to scare everyone with the trolls and stalkers and green ink loons and extreme porn. But there is an awful lot of kindness out there in the ether, if you know where to look, and I don’t take a single word of it for granted.

The sneerers say the whole thing is narcissism and showing off, as shallow as a puddle on a slick city pavement. But every time you bother to write a generous comment, or like a photograph someone has taken, with one of those little thumbs ups, or put a favourite star by a tweet, you are adding some tiny increment of goodness and generosity to somebody’s day. That somebody is quite likely a complete stranger to you. You are making that unmet human smile. You are giving the gift of encouragement, which has a price beyond rubies. You are sending out little arrows of love across the known world.

Think of that. It’s a bloody miracle.