Hi, and welcome to the twenty-seventh instalment of The New Leaf, an informal and no longer so infrequent email bulletin. It's the end of January, in which I've been neither dry, vegan nor resolved. It's a terrible time of year for starting new things! I'm not saying we shouldn't lay off the sauce or eat more plants on occasion, but the time to do anything bracing is the spring - right now we're still in deepest winter. This is the time to rest and contemplate, and to maintain rather than advance. In winter