Down to Dorset for the annual bucket and spade (my bucket always full of manuscripts I am working on of course). We have stayed in this little place for 15 years, and there is something amazing about seeing how ones children have grown and changed over the years. The weather is always better here than anywhere else, and we arrived in pouring rain, but soon turned to sun. My sisters and their families where staying the same week in another cottage, theirs in the woods, only a few minutes from the sea, for us the sea is a one minute excursion! We see some old friends, the Shakespeares and Baileys and the Martins, who we try to catch up with every year and have a similar sense of curiosity seeing their children getting older year by year. We have plenty of time to ourselves too.

An Easter service on the cliff as usual, and this year we also scatter my mother’s ashes on the beach below the chapel, allowing the tide to take them away; she loved to walk here, and I often think of our chats here as we watched the sunset. During the week I make an early morning excursion to see Glastonbury Abbey, an amazing group of remains surrounded by the town and in close proximity the famous tor. The shops are a mixture of estate agents and bakeries, and shops devoted to mysticism, meditation and magic. Its surreal, but the whole experience glorious in the morning sunshine. I spent time in chat with the costumed guide, dressed as a monk who tells a good story, and having come early I am one of handful of people on site. Much to muse on here for my book on ruins which is my current passion. Back to Cambridge, working on the completion of two other books.