It's a year since my last blog. Who'd have known then what was to follow for us all? 2020 was a blue year.

During the first week of the first lockdown, the Today programme broadcast a series of poems of comfort and hope, each one selected and read by a different member of the News team. Fergal Keane, who'd struggled with PTSD after his experiences as a war reporter, chose This is the time to be slow by the late Irish poet John O'Donohue. It's been my companion throughout the year.

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

You can listen to the recording of him reading it here.

At times like this I take my strength from nature and two places in particular - Birling Gap on the south coast and Talkin Tarn up on the England/Scotland border where my dad lives. These pictures were taken there on a cold, windy visit when O'Donohue's fresh pastures of promise seemed an eternity away.

I thought I'd share the music I was listening to when I put this blog together just in case there's anything of interest - the Spotify playlist is here. Finally, feel free to click on the individual pictures so that they open up in Lightbox mode as - unusually for me - they’re not square.