My dictionary gives the following definitions of a miracle:

“an extraordinary event attributed to some supernatural agency”

One of my favourite poets is Shelley, who wrote about this “Vale of Tears” that we live in. In this Vale of Tears, can miracles really happen? As we get older, more aware of our mortality, less convinced of our uniqueness, further away from innocence, and increasingly uncertain of our legacy, we become more cynical and less likely to believe in things like miracles.

I’m no different.

This is sad.

The first and for a long time the only miracle I think I ever saw - and I’m not trivialising this as it changed my life, was beautiful, has stayed with me forever, inspires me still, and was truly extraordinary, was Ian Botham’s famous innings at Headingley in 1981 when England were following on against Australia. Just writing the words sends a shiver down my spine, and I’m reminded of some fantastic lines from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’:

“Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again”

My memories of Headingley 1981 come from a different age, those happy highways where I went and cannot come again, where I was young and would live forever, and everything was possible.

The all too brief time I spend with you is also from a different age, which I thought would never end – and in my dreams it never did!

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say – perhaps this is my web site’s equivalent of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” chapter from ‘The Wind in the Willows’, who can say? Anyway, I want you all to know that you showed me what love really meant, you made and make me happy just because you’re you, and that you were the first real miracles in my life.

We may not meet up again – but you remain miracles for me.