It has been my experience that endings are the hardest things to write. I mean, beginnings are tricky – you have to catch the flighty reader and convince them to stay a while – but the ending has to be the thing to linger long after they have finished. It must serve as a review-and-wrap-up, as well as a look to the future.

All of this preamble has had one (slightly laboured) purpose: to introduce my final column in Weekend. (For now, anyway. A good ending must also include a caveat, I think.)

It has been truly a pleasure to write this little column for so long (slightly more than four years) and to have found such lovely readers during that time. From its earliest iteration as The Crush (which came from my pop culture list on Twitter, #Bims10Things), readers have let me delight in the things that give me joy. That has included celebrating the unique younger-sister vibes of Solange and Serena Williams, the acquisition of colourful houseplants and the pleasure of seeing Janeane Garofalo on stage. The crush became First Take, before morphing into its current incarnation, Briefly Noted – and my editors, who are actually saints, have edited patiently through it all, even with my dire timekeeping.

I will miss you, readers, so generous with your time and eyes. Without you, I would have just been writing slightly longer tweets and yelling into my computer. With you, I achieved a childhood dream: I had a column in the Guardian. I got to be read over breakfast, on blankets in the park, sometimes on a hard pebble beach. Four years is a long time to have been a part of your weekends, and while I feel it’s now time to draw a line, it has been my complete pleasure.

Thank you.