It’s an investment you just won’t believe:

The more you put in, the more you receive -

L is for love.

Writing about love is - almost - a pointless exercise. From Shakespeare to Aretha Franklin, it feels like everybody else already said it better, years ago. But it doesn’t stop us – the urge is always there to find some new way to express it. I recently read Amy Liptrot’s beautiful book The Outrun, in which she described a relationship that had gone wrong because she had held on too tightly: ‘I’d caught around him, like tights in the laundry’.

I’ve been lucky and grateful to be surrounded by love all of my life – wrapped in warm blankets of love as a child and in loving relationships ever since. I’m an only child that always craved attention and approval - so to this day, I go running towards the applause as if it’s love. Like an eight year old being told what a good boy he is.

I recently found my first ever school report from St. Malachy’s Primary School in Coleraine – from Miss Devenney, Christmas 1969: ‘Anthony is a grand little boy…’ she begins. And across the canyons of the years I feel the glow of love and approval. I can see the pattern being set, even then.