Making my way to work through yet another morning of thick fog this week, the vehicle in front was puffing out circles of emissions, in an almost perfectly rounded form accentuated by the thick fog, and the dazzling red lights of the vehicle’s fog lights, immediately above its exhaust.

The subtle changing of the seasons is especially important in a year such as this, when for many of us, time seemed to slow for months on end, before still not getting back to a semblance of normality, before this dreadful year is out.

In Burcot, following the course of the River Thames, it was like Narnia, but in Warborough, the sun had come out and it was like Spring. Aslan is on the move.

By the time we had reached Abingdon, we passed the building site of another more or less complete development of retirement apartments for older people, proudly flying developers flags, permitted under Class 3A, of Part 1 of Schedule 3 of The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) Regulations 2007.

Below the flags, a red and white sign proclaimed 'Building companionship and community', as if this is something which can be commercially ordained and sold, along with the bricks and mortar of a property. It can’t: it is something which takes years of respect, work and love.

Driving back from a meeting in Essex on Sunday, for once as a passenger, I joined our church’s online ‘Zoom Room’ for a meeting with brothers and sisters in our church community, unable to meet in the real world for months on end, this year.

We are a church where, in ordinary times, it is not at all unusual for people to still be milling around at the back, chatting over coffee, for more than an hour after the service has concluded. In many ways, the after-church coffee is as important as the liturgy which has preceded it.

All churches have been doing things differently in Coronatide. The range of creativity, learning and adaptation to new methods of working has been astounding, as have the practical offers of help given to me and others who have been in need this year, both within and outside the church community.

Acceptance of help is not automatically a given thing for someone who is fit and healthy, used for more than half a lifetime to the rough and tumble world of self-employment, where if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.

We all need help at some point in our lives - even those of us like me, who pride ourselves on our stubborn, some might say dogmatic, independence.

“May you always do for others, And let others do for you”, as Bob Dylan sang in 1973.