Travelling up to London to raise funds for my beloved thousand year old church, I arrived in the city to find myself in a huge, apparently empty, glistening white building, looking down on the ruins of a Roman wall and, amazingly, a wild flower garden. As I waited on the 11th floor I could help myself to coffee and then get out onto a balcony with plenty of greenery.

We arrived in the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains with the newly emerged leaves of the copper beeches in their translucent glory and the birches in their lovely fresh green. There were snow patches on the hills and golden daffodils welcomed us as we passed the mysteriously named Blacklunans hamlet and reached our Norwegian log cabin, ideally built to withstand the hard winters and massive snowfalls. In the first week we recovered from the long drive with magic walks dow

The journey so often made - the first time by boat in 1948, two weeks to Cape Town, flying fish on the deck, adults playing quoits or pounding endlessly around the ship

After two successful book launches — one in the Wiltshire village where I live and another at Andrew Edmunds in Soho — I filmed myself reading a couple of poems and posted them on my Facebook author page before flying to South Africa for my annual visit. I grew up in Johannesburg in the 1950s. It has changed enormously since then, in many ways for the better, though the continuing poverty, corruption and crime remain troubling. Yet South Africa is still magnificent. Racial te