Every now and then, when something is on my mind, I wake in the middle of the night. Tonight is one of those nights. I have learnt to get up and make myself a hot drink, to read for a while before returning, easily, to sleep.

Tonight I decide to write a few lines on my blog. I am aware that I wrote less often in January than I aim to. I began the month by resting as much as I could to support my body in recovering from a lingering winter bug and then entered a busy couple of weeks.

Waking in the middle of the night I look out on the nighttime beauty of the snow that started to fall in the early evening and is now several inches deep. The light has a quality all of its own as all light reflects from the bright untrodden snow. I enjoy this winter scene.

And before returning to sleep, I take a moment to celebrate my brother, Alan, who is fifty today and my mother, who gave birth fifty years ago to her first child.