It was a distinctly chilly day as my 10 year-old daughter and I walked through the grass in the stretch of countryside near to our house looking for something to draw. We stopped halfway up the hill, sat down on the damp turf and started to sketch. We could hear birds all around, the distant yapping of dogs, the hum of traffic; we felt the wind biting our faces, the soft ground beneath us. It wasn’t wild, it wasn’t wilderness, but for a short while it was just the two of us, sitting together drawing what we saw in our little patch of green.

The cold made a mockery of our coats, and our hands started to go numb. We had finished a drawing each — they weren’t masterpieces, but that didn’t matter at all. We had taken ourselves to a different place for a while, and that was wonderful. Life can be wonderful when you make an effort.