‘An aged man is but a paltry thing/A tattered coat upon a stick’ – so W. B. Yeats described my stage in life (‘Sailing to Byzantium’). I admit to being aged and upon a stick, but Leah and other visiting nurses persistently remove any coat or other garment that has become tattered. I feel myself perched upon ‘a golden bough’ and free to sing with gratitude ‘of what is past, or passing, or to come’ – especially, of ‘what is past’.