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?

France: Strasbourg

We passed the Vosges mountains on our left as we sped along to Strasbourg, another city that surprised us. Europe has certainly made its mark on the station building there, but we hadn't thought there would be so much else to see between trains. Leaving our backpacks, it was an easy walk to the old centre - the Grande Île.

This turns out to be a city crammed full of fine buildings, but dominated by the pink Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg with its vast spire. The carvings - inside and out - and the stained glass are sensational; but then I seem to have felt that about very many of the churches and cathedrals we have visited. What was different here was the throng of people, in spite of which the manner in which the authorities presented the church and its works of art to the public displayed a special reverence.