I'm not sure if this is a true story, but I hope it is. When my mum was pregnant with me, 31 years and some months ago, she was too busy to go to the hospital for a scan. Living on a sheep farm, we had scanning equipment so the first glimpse of foetus-me was through a sheep-scanner, my mum (in my imagination) laid out flat in the lambing shed.

Maybe it's not true, but anyway, today is my birthday and I am thinking, as I always do this time of year, about all the things which have happened in the last year, and also of where I came from. I started life on a farm and I hope that soon I can go back to that, in a small way. The last year feels like it has been 'my year', in a way, when all the agonising I did in my twenties suddenly faded and I was left feeling: life is short, let's get on with it.