My magic childhood.

The human mind suffers; the divine mind heals.

Let me say this, without any equivocation, ghosts are real. I think what we call the supernatural, is entirely natural. There. Okay, put that to one side, I will come to it later.

Now, I love it when conversations take an unexpected turn. That’s when you strike gold. It happened to me this week recording an episode for a podcast called Club Sandwich, which explores the generation of people, still parenting, caring for ageing parents and ageing ourselves.

The sandwich generation – stuck in the middle. That’s me. That’s a lot of us.

I thought I was going to talk about ageing, but I ended up talking about what is derided as woo-woo. That is, the reality unseen. You know, elves and fairies and ghosts and talking trees.

In this I am in good company. Arthur Conan Doyle, W.B. Yeats, J.R.R. Tolkien, Toni Morrison, were all devotees of a supernatural world.

Anyway, the podcast host, Sarah Macdonald, asked me if, as I age, I have found myself returning to childhood. Oh yes, I said, and for me, that is a very weird and wonderful place indeed.