As I compose these thoughts I can see groups of 2 to 6 people sitting on the grass between isolated trees and a group of 7 crows walking together. In the distance are three white geese with yellow beaks such as you might expect in an old-fashioned story book for children. I feel their presence, like that of the mansion and the imaginary barge on the water, and the real ornamental fish in it, are parts of an achieved if contrived utopia such as idealists plan and the rest of us may occasionally enjoy - though perhaps more as fiction than reality. Second question mark?

Now the sun has ceased to shine on this scene and people look as if they will soon depart while the animals will stay all night in this piece of architectural dreamland (which to them is perhaps everything). The geese are still in amongst the people who are feeding them as if they had been invited to their picnic.

And now, before departing myself, I consider the possibility of writing my most useful thoughts and experiences in a form accessible to anyone who has not shared the life in which they arose, and still arise...

...and as I do so a small woman and a vast dog, surely the same weight and length as herself, walk by in evident accord (or should I say friendship?) despite the collar and lead that connect them.

Can it be that the world, even the part we contrive, is better than we think?

(these pages are designed to be read with the window set to two-thirds of the screen width)