Another threshold – and here we are counting what has gone before, guessing what might lie ahead. Moving away from, towards; over, across; out of, into. And taking stock: the media have told us what 2019 was about – the news stories, books and films have been rounded up. There isn’t, as yet, much real sense of what will be new about the new year and the new decade. But we go with it, we celebrate the passage. It would be churlish not to.

I must admit, I like the strange uplift – a feeling of hovering in the thermals between one year and the next, one decade and another.

I’ve chosen two poems by the late Helen Dunmore to mark the threshold of this new year and new decade, and I bring them to you with all good wishes for headiness and groundedness, looking back and looking forward, and trying to live in the balance, one moment at a time, as well as possible – with care and respect for our world and all the forms of life that share it.

Here’s to love, patience, kindness, compassion. I wish everyone a happy, hopeful, creative New Year!