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The seasons are turning and I'm starting to travel home at dusk now, not in thick darkness. It's always a great time of year, with the promise of spring hovering in the frosty air. The mornings are bright and days are getting noticeably longer. And the countryside is waking up a little: more birds singing, more skittering in the undergrowth, more deer looking up startled through the leafless branches as I tootle past. Not long now until the evenings really start to light up and we think about changing the clocks to make the most of it.  I love the hopefulness of this time of year.

Sorry, couldn't resist ... the lamppost made me do it. I'm outside St Swithun's, Great Dalby, in Leicestershire. It's almost 8pm so the church is, unsurprisingly, locked. I'm I improving myself by reading gravestones outside.  And what an improving set of monuments they are. Almost every one seems to have a cautionary verse of poetry at the bottom. So Mary Pick (who died in 1820) warns me:  Reader! remember as this stone you view, The transitory life you're passing through.  Thy time's uncertain, death it may be near  And cut thee off before thou art aware. Well indeed. Next door, her grandfather John (1826) suggests this:  O Reader think of that tremendous day When Christ thy every action will survey, And thou receive for deeds transacted here Celestial glory or intense despair.  It's pretty much like that on row after row of gravestones.  So I was delighted to stumble across Robert Parker (1854) who struck a rather more celebratory note: ...