a sunlit kingdom touched by butterflies ...

and so saturday dawns, sun-bright and hot ... Isa Felix and Mia depart early for swimming lessons ... Gavin moves around upstairs and I get up ...

I make a cup of tea and catch up with the blog ... Gavin emerges only to take himself off to the studio at the top of the garden to continue work on an essay required for his MA ... alas creativity has to be tempered with scholarly writing ...

Benedict emerges and over toast we try and get some coherent conversation going without much success ... I hadnt realised we had imbibed so much last night ... Isa returns very briefly to grab sun hats for the children and then disappears as quickly as she arrived ...

we pack up and say our goodbyes to Gavin, having tried and failed to squeeze a large framed work that Benedict had left here after a project in Cheltenham ... yet another haven of hospitality and generosity we have found on our trip ...

last night Gavin should have dropped off a key last night on his way through Cheltenham, however the lure of the takeaway and our company had distracted him so we agree to take the key back for him ... we gentle our way through the hills and woodlands of Gloucestershire and end up having a cup of tea in the sun in a Cheltenham back-garden underneath the sycamores and the washing on the washing line ...

and then once again we are off ... we take lunch in Stratford at the award winning cafe again and the symmetry of the journey is complete ... a week ago we sat in this very same spot eating the very same sandwich - well not the very same sandwich as that would mean eating ... anyway you know what I mean ...

we head onto the A blah-de-blah to Coventry, hit the M1, strangely devoid of traffic, listening to the FA Cup final on the radio and in no time we are in Leeds dropping Benedict off at his gaff, drinking tea with the wild-back-neighbours ...

to tell the truth I think we are both in a state of semi-shock, moving into that difficult territory that we enter when we return to the familiar and it seems so very very strange ... I say goodbye to Benedict tell him not to fall into the pit of despair ...

and then the Director shouts cut ... and cinematically I am in Scarborough, sat in my front room, drinking yet more tea, looking out over the sparkling sea ...

And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves

Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand

As they have done for centuries, as they will

For centuries to come, when not a soul

Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks,

When England is not England, when mankind

Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea,

Consolingly disastrous, will return

While the strange starfish, hugely magnified,

Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool

Beside the Seaside, John Betjeman