Jonathan: 2013 blogs, before today’s: just two posts in January, and then two more in July – that’s it.  The latter part of 2012 wasn’t much better. It wasn’t that there wasn’t time to blog; or rather it wasn’t just that there wasn’t time! Nor that there seemed nothing good to report : quite the reverse – seen in retrospect. True, it wasn’t easy to find time for anything other than slog away at whatever task could least be put off. It’s been a long time since I’ve had leisure enough for anything more than to scan a magazine or snatch a few pages of a novel I started so many months ago I can’t remember when. Blogging. – or at least my kind of blog – is by and large reflective in nature, and though I strive to write with as much immediacy and freshness as possible, my blogs have nothing in common with the supposedly raw, live prattle of social media. (That’s not an apology, by the way.) Without time, space and – above all – freedom from (or at least a suspension of) anxiety, my blogs just don’t get written, and the many threads of thought that could be followed wherever they might lead remain but flotsam and jetsam of thought – carried away on the stream of consciousness. But today – with blogs not just drafted, but published immediately – that’s changed. Or rather, a change that has been in the making for several months, perhaps longer, has now been realized. Workload has eased, yes: many major projects are – if not complete – at least as far advanced as allows an easing off the throttle.  But it’s not just a question of facts, but of perception. At last we see not only that the end of the tunnel is in sight, but that we begin to make out the character and detail of the country that lies ahead. The time when we can stop and take time out (by which I mean nothing more than a day off – without work at all other than feeding the livestock) is still some way off, but in the meantime, finding ourselves making good progress after all, we can afford to take things easier, and at least make the most of each moment – whether in work or ease.