The Summer Solstice, or Litha as it is known in the old Celtic calendar, is only a few days away. The single day of the year of the when the light lasts longest and I want to put it in my pocket and keep it forever. I’d like to roll up all the beautiful hedgerows and the country lanes and lay them out somewhere in the sunshine so I can walk them all. I’d like to ask all the birds to keep singing and to stay in their nests all year round, as the swallows and the swifts and house martins all appear back in the eaves of our summer roofs. Wasn’t it empty without them?

I walk through our valley park and I wonder how I will ever live without the banks of cow parsley and the field poppies and the busy, busy butterflies and bees. It feels as…