I walked back home over the Wolds in the twilight evening about ten – a vast sky over my head was alive with stars. The North Star reaching from the plough. The last afternoon I did the same walk down over the edge of the Wolds to the station. This time a great expanse of lands for twenty or thirty miles opened up before me. The train journey was horribly delayed, taking seven hours to get to London! But I took the opportunity of an enforced stay in Lincoln to attend as much of Evensong as I could. What an experience to enter that great cathedral in the midst of a long journey and hear the psalm being sung and then the Magnificat and Nunc Dimmitis.

To me, the journey explains much. If ever the problems of the world encumber us we need to look up to the stars – billions upon billions of them – and sooth our troubled perspectives. If ever the problems of our life overwhelm us we should look to acknowledge and calm our disordered perspective.

And overwhelmed, all we need to remember and seek to believe. Whatever our place in the journey, the source of it all, the beginning and the ending.

All this walking and thinking on the insignificance of our worries against the wonder of the stars and nature stood me in good stead, or should have done, in a meeting with the bank manager to manage debts. No matter what, bills have to be paid.