Officially I’ve knocked off for the Christmas and New Year holidays. I’m still awake earlier than I need to be, but the rotten weather this morning is (so far) putting me off a Saturday morning run. For today’s forecast, check out the clip to the left – which for the record I’ve extracted (in what I think is a permitted way) from the Met Office website. So for now it’s just me, my porridge, a mug of strong coffee and my computer. I reckon I have about 30 minutes before I’m joined by others, by then also awake and up for the day.

So I have a precious window in which to reflect on a first month of blogging. First up is to state how much I’ve enjoyed it. I began with the idea of writing about my research, drawing on my work as an academic mental health nurse at Cardiff University. I had the plan of blogging about papers and projects, and providing links wherever possible to articles available for public download via the University’s ORCA open access repository. I’ve certainly done some of this (as examples, check out my earlier posts on wicked problems here, here and here, my post on research ethics and governance and my post on the measurement of blood pressure and what this tells us about health care tasks).

But having gone to the bother of setting it up I’ve also found myself drawn to using this site as a place to record more general observations: on mental health care, nursing, policy, people and so on. That wasn’t completely planned, but I’m pleased to have used my blog for this purpose. It wasn’t a long post, but the short point I made in defence of student nurses earlier this week felt worth saying. I expect, as I head into what promises to be a very busy but exciting 2013, that I’ll continue to use this space in this additional way.

Others are now awake, and I should go. So without further ado, here at the right is the picture of the tree that’s mentioned in this post’s title. South Wales is full of trails, mountains and woodland. I enjoy this variety very much, as both a born-again runner and as a walker of longer standing. In January this year, heading out on a favourite route along the top of Craig yr Allt, I happened upon this enormous, fallen, monster. It had come down in high winds during the previous week, presumably missing by a whisker the telegraph wires you can see towards the top of the photo.

The tree rests, still, where it fell. For those using the path the way through is either over or under the branches to the right. Goodness knows how the horses are managing it.

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