(Published in The Guardian on 26.12.14) This year was a strange year. The weeks seem blurred and indistinct to me now, though I remember the glimmers of it: Brazil, Bridgwater, Santa Fe; mimosa blossom, Heart of Gold, the sound of choughs on a warm Welsh morning. I have not often chosen to write about my personal life in my journalistic career; rarely do I imagine readers' lives enriched by such detail and mundanity. But sometimes it seems impossible to write of anything else, and the loss of a child is a deep and particular grief; a root that spreads beneath all of the days of a year and leaves them unearthed. For a long time I do not look at it. I cannot speak of it. It sits in the dark place beneath deadlines and social events, gigs, emails, interviews, telephone calls, airports. It lies under all happinesses and the bright days of summer. But I am driving along the coast of California when my iPod suddenly plays a song that ...