They say that the past comes back to haunt you. I don’t think it haunts. I think that it envelopes you like a warm blanket.

Chris Hall, one of my dearest friends at Oxford, was at my 70th birthday party there. I was seeing him after ten years, for he had been at the last of my 60th birthday celebration in Colombo, a couple of weeks late. That was the last lunch party at the big table downstairs that my father attended, and also there was his doctor, Vimala Navaratnam, who had looked after the whole family with dedication for over forty years. Both of them passed away later that year.

Chris and I kept in touch though we could not meet, and he followed my blog with enthusiasm, sending me encouraging messages. But this time, when we met serendipitously towards the end of our stay, for he was in Aberdeen when I got back from Orkney, he told me that he thought perhaps there was a little too much of gardens on the blog. This was as we travelled down together by train, after he had given me breakfast having met me at the ferry.

I could see what he meant, but how grave the problem was registered only when I looked at the pictures I had been using, and found that there was nothing but fish and flowers for well over a year. And though I have derived enormous pleasure from these, I cannot really expect others to feel the same about them, and I am sure there are others like Chris who wonder at my audacity in expecting them to admire what could well seem the same roses again and again, the same fish in different combinations. I recalled then my father wondering at the enthusiasm my sister and I had for trips to the jungle, wondering why we were so thrilled to see the same elephant again and again.

So I thought I would desist, at least up to a point, and confine myself to just one post a week about the garden, combining with it as I did at the start the water features too. And instead, for the second post on this blog I would go back to my travels, having before nature took over written about the journeys I made in 2022, to Georgia and Rajasthan and Kerala and Croatia, with en route the sheer splendour of Ravenna.

I did not travel so much in 2023, for there were just three trips, and one was to Thailand where I was sedentary, reading and sitting on a beach and talking to Peter Rowe, something I had missed during the coronavirus restrictions. That was such fun, that I repeated it this year, and perhaps I should try to record something of the pleasures of those visits, and the glories of sunset from his balcony and mine.

But now I will talk about the pleasure of my visit to England last summer, leaving here just under a year ago after a dinner party to celebrate the 75th wedding anniversary of my parents.