“Black Hole Budget” blues, American election alarms, seemingly endless conflicts in Middle East and Ukraine, scatty weather and widespread destruction of our countryside are just some of the topics dominating an agenda of doom and gloom.

It’s hard to be too optimistic in times like these … but I found precious grains of solace in a couple of gentle jaunts along and around the North Norfolk coast.

They enabled me to usher into play a few of my favourite words …character, cherish, durable, inviting, peaceable and space.

Perhaps they did emerge more readily as an unlikely warm sun stirred the soul and brought extra appeal and colour to the familiar.

Geese arrow over moody marshes. Rusty leaves leap up and whirl round village war memorials waiting to be decked out in fresh crimson.

Turned-up collars are back in fashion along the coastal catwalk. The old game of “spot the local” is suddenly easier to play.

I confess to plotting a deliberate path towards a revivalist tent on the village green, marvelling at the uncertainty of country days to come.

Does that big glaze of berries portend........

© Eastern Daily Press