GIVE ME A BREAK:THE OTHER NIGHT on the way home from work I was so laden down with stuff that I left a bag on the Dart platform. No sooner had the doors closed behind me than I realised what I'd done and tried to call the Tara Street Dart office, but its number was unlisted.

I spent the entire journey home to Glasthule enduring self-ridicule, only to discover when I had walked the 10 minutes to my front door that there was already a young man there, talking to my husband. He had my bag.

“I didn’t snoop or anything but I found the address on some documents,” he was saying.

And he was a faster walker too, since he’d arrived at my house just a minute before I did.

He’d seen the bag on the platform and instead of leaving it there, reckoned that since he was also on a southbound Dart he would figure out who the bag belonged to, get off at the nearest station and then personally deliver it, which he did.

I was so grateful that I offered him money for his trouble – he’d gotten off at a station not his own and now had to face another walk, wait and journey home – but he refused recompense. Doing the right thing was reward in itself.

I’d like to meet the parents who raised that kid. And God bless the kindness of strangers.

Another good thing: over mid-term break my beautiful middle child and her equally beautiful older sister decided to spring- clean the house (no mean feat) without having to be asked. They were undoubtedly fed up with living in the scandalous squalor that only a mother who does long hours in the office can so easily provide. (Top tip: Leave the laundry, food shopping and housecleaning long enough and they will realise you’re not superwoman/superman.)

Thanks also to the man in the queue behind me in Eurospar, Killiney, who stepped up to the plate when I was €10 short. As I was handing back items to the girl at the till, he told her to stop and gave her the €10. I insisted on getting his details so I could later repay him (he’s a builder, darn it, wish I’d been €100 short) and he reluctantly gave his name and said they knew him at the shop, and if I left the €10 there he would get it, which I did – and I hope he got it.

Next day, I was in my local Spar in Sandycove and the teenager in front of me had misplaced the €10 he’d been given for phone credit, so I gave him €10. He said, “You know what? I was in McDonald’s today and there was a guy who couldn’t pay and I gave him €10.”

I like to think that this €10 is still making its way around people helping each other out in a pinch.

Another person I want to thank (am I beginning to sound like Kate Winslet?) is our handyman.

When he comes to the door, he always says “God bless this house” – and with his supersize toolbox and ingenuity in repairing unhinged doors, wonky drawers, leaking plumbing, holes in ceilings caused by leaking plumbing, faulty lighting, disintegrating doorknobs and other issues caused by builders who did it wrong in the first place (sorry Killiney builder, I’m not talking about you), his arrival does make me feel blessed.

Our handyman is quite religious in the traditional Catholic way and does everything, dare I say, with prayerful intent. He focuses on his task and does it properly, and if he thinks somebody else could do it better, he says so. He goes on pilgrimages occasionally and might give me a memento because we have figured in his prayers. An informal lay priest that also fixes doorknobs? The man’s a saint.

Who else can I thank this week? My colleague Marie Claire Digby, who overheard me discussing the art of home-made pizza with Kevin Courtney and handed me a little book ( Pizza Definedby Bernadette O'Shea, Estragon Press) that had my daughters and I producing pizza this weekend that, dare I say, rivals Milano's, at a fraction of the price.

You have to give a little back, so when an elderly lady stops me on the road to ask whether high-end food products from The Butler’s Pantry are worth the money (they are, especially for a lady living on her own who won’t make braised beef or lasagne because it’s too much trouble, but needs a homemade-style meal now and again), I realise what she really wants is a chat, so I miss the Dart to spend five minutes with her talking about nothing much.

Some people call it “social capital”. Or you can think of it as that €10 note making its way around the world. We didn’t talk ourselves into a recession and we can’t talk ourselves out of it, but little acts of kindness will help us through it.