I always find the time to thank people for their kindness.

The nurse who took your father's blood pressure twice in one night has a name you never learned. So does the man who stopped to help with the flat tyre outside Bicester.

Thanks tends to arrive late or not at all. Not because people are ungrateful, but because kindness is easiest to see in hindsight, once you are safe again and can afford to look back.

Which makes thanking a slightly awkward act. It usually means going backwards - a message months late, a phone call that opens with an apology for the delay.

Send it anyway. Nobody has ever minded receiving one of those.