You know those occasions when the words you want to write are unforthcoming? No matter how you approach it, the idea upper most refuses to budge and sits like an angry spider up in the apex of your mind, just glaring?

Well, such is the case with the intended rounding off this depleting year.

To which end, rather than whinge and whine, we look ahead in the hope to get the year off to a flying start.

As I grew up, 2018 was the telephone number. Flux of life mandates it waxed in girth and now no-one remembers the streams of locationless figures, reminiscent of π – pi.

Yet it is this flux which may save Hope from Despair’s greedy arms. The world turns, the air redeems in the darkness of night, each new day an end of yesterday. In short, we start afresh.

Madeleine Baird Materials wishes all readers of these pages, all clients of the business, all new-comers to emotional intelligence bon courage for a bold and thrilling year ahead.

We’re counting on being the change we want to see.