Happy birthday George. 25th Feb.

Today would have marked the 70th birthday of the late George Harrison, who made up one-fourth of one of the most famous musical quartets in music history, The Beatles.

Kevin Ayers, who has died aged 68.

Kevin Ayers, who has died aged 68, was, as a solo artist and at the helm of Soft Machine, a troubadour of pastoral psychedelic pop music. He will be missed.

In the Cold of the Night.

I gaze into the still, starry sky

my breathing caught and frozen

in the biting cold of the taciturn night

that presses around me like a glittering,

timeless cloak of uncertainty.

The silver stars seem to appear one by one

like shy creatures creeping from the shadows

of a dark forest. They are travellers in time,

but like pilgrims to a holy shrine,

they leave their mark, their history,

their secret wisdom, their consciousness

seeping into the fabric of creation,

spilling into our loneliness like birds

to a solitary tree, whose branches

like great, strong arms

holding up the universe,

stretch into the vastness of eternity.