Those who know me well, know just how much I hate receiving a Christmas card with a robin on it. (Or a snowman, or a Santa, but the robin just seems to epitomise this for me.) Christmas is about Christ, not winter.

But I’m sharing this to show you that I don’t have it in for robins, because today I was ‘wonderstruck’ – the name of a new book by Margaret Feinberg, who is virtually pestering us to look at things with more wonder. The trouble is that the more people tell you to look with wonder, the less wonder I have. For me, wonder just happens – I can’t make it happen just by thinking about it.

Today it just happened. Without warning. I was sitting having breakfast and I glanced out the window. There it was. A little robin with its red breast proudly sticking out was perching on top of our gate post. For some reason I was entranced by its beauty. Statuesque is how it looked, but with such grace and vibrant colour that no statue of a robin could ever capture.

I realised – slowly, I confess – that it was lying in wait to compete with some sparrows who were munching on some bugs in the pile of apple tree branches stacked ready for collection. Its moment never came. A passing pedestrian scared it from its perch and the branches are gone now too. But for a fleeting moment, there on the gate post it looked as if it owned the world. I was wonderstruck.