My incorrigible friend Hugh Allen, sports car driving retired rural dean, ceramicist and writer, wished to respond in faith to the 2020 Covid epidemic. So at the height of the pandemic, about a month after lockdown, he wrote, in vision and anticipation, a Haiku poem of thanksgiving for recovery.

I struggled for a form within which to set it: 'Do what you like Ian!’ he said, so I settled on a responsorial psalm, changing the title from A Song of Thanks to A Psalm of Thanks, and adding the words Alleluia and Miserere as refrains, making the writing as simple and repetitive as possible, for immediate and wide appeal. Six years on, the outcome of the pandemic may have not been as straightforward as was prayed for, but we have much for which to be thankful.

The cover illustration is of the dawn from my study window, taken on 11th January 2021. Later the same day the UK government announced the roll-out of a massive campaign of anti-covid vaccinations.