The wonders of technology – techné + logos: this is written and posted while lounging against one of those infinitely solid, reassuring cedars at the southern end of Greenwich Park. If you took in coverage of the London Olympics, the Park hosted, inter alia, equestrian events.

What does this say about the world apart from how miraculous it is to have a hotly sunny, cloudless sky on a sacred holiday?

While carnage is wrought in Belgium, Syria and Iraq, while political argey-bargey causes the grudging shift of the chess pieces, while inexorable waves of migrants continue to wash up on shores they’d rather never have encountered, while there lurks in every community dark and terrible secrets, while there’ll always be those who wish to hang us out to dry, while limitless iniquities unfurl on Good Friday, it seems important to remember we can and ought captain our souls.

Thus, I intend to cultivate this discerning skill to account for actions by virtue of Listening to Spring’s birdsong: it is a melody and rhythm of life.