Post-investiture

Luckily, we happened to be coming to London anyway today, so could be part of the celebratory lunch party after our friend Sarah received her MBE at Buckingham Palace - well-earned by many years at the inter-faith coalface in South London and elsewhere.

Pope Francis' Strasbourg speech yesterday rang simultaneously a warning to and an endorsement of the EU - the latter being something Sarah's Islamic friend and I passionately agreed upon. Unfortunately she had moved round the table by the time I found myself in a radically different conversation on the same subject with my other neighbour, a UKIP sympathiser.

Having been brought up short by this, I was again by something in the Times, a paper I normally never see. Columnist Janice Turner - in her Notebook - writes about a friend with a home that makes Janice want to change her entire house. How does she achieve this? Why, by abandoning "dim eco-friendly bulbs". "Sod the planet," the friend says, and Janice follows suit. Haven't they heard of LED?

Bryter Layter

This morning started cold, dark and foggy, but the sun emerged in time for me to walk down to the shops (and so warm up).

The other bright spot is our kitchen, its ceiling newly-fitted out with LED bulbs. They make a big difference.

Nick Drake - "Bryter Layter" was his second album - was the son of friends of my parents: at one of his first schools he and Sarah were contemporaries. The web is alive with old photographs many of which I find I recognise.