Today is Armed Forces Day and it’s one of my favourite days in the year, because it offers another opportunity to think on and thank our amazing armed service personnel for their hard work and incredible sacrifice.

I had lot of pictures to share with you today but sadly I’ve been unwell the last couple of days so it’s just a little bit of writing now. Hopefully I’ll be able to edit this post over the next few days to share with you some of the pictures, ideas and recipes we have used to celebrate this time.

There are so many ways to show your appreciation for our armed services. If you are civilian, obviously one of the best ways is to support a military charity or ask a military friend. There are some really excellent military charities out there offering various kinds of provision for service or ex-service personnel and their families.

One of the best ones is small armed force charity called Reading Force and founded by Professor Alison Baverstock and run by Alison and her dedicated and knowledgable team Hattie, Fiona and Elaine. Reading Force provides free story books to the children of military families to help protect and foster the bond between the parent’s and children when one or both parents are deployed or in training away from home. It’s truly wonderful how their concept of shared reading benefits all the members of the family and significantly reduces separation anxiety.

Reading Force have also just celebrated their 10th Anniversary so I will also come back with more about that later because it is all very exciting!