Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I'm one of those undemanding people who tends to quietly appreciate the small stuff in life and find something to marvel at in the simplest things. And since this city boy followed the man off his heart to the country a few years ago, I have found I don't have to deliberately cultivate a sense of wonder, because happily it's never too far away from me.

I have always been fond of solitude, and on my expeditions through the woods and fields, moors and cliffs that surround my home I have not only found many peaceful (and creatively encouraging) moments but also many marvellous ones - and I mean that in the literal sense of something that provokes wonder and amazement.

Nature is truly a wonderful mistress. I'm not strongly articulate or deep enough to avoid horrible clichés where she is concerned, but there is incredible beauty in the fragile skeleton of a rotted leaf, mist curled like a cat in the valley, roses crystallised in hoar-frost, the fascinating alien microcosm of a clump of moss, cobwebs in sunlight strewn through the branches of a tree like fairy hammocks, the slant of light through a beech wood. These things are all still as fresh and wondrous to me to me as they were when I first saw them, and I don't think they will ever lose their magic: