One afternoon in late-October of 2011, I was sat in the back of a car in a street of the Burundian capital of Bujumbura. An Irish colleague sat in the passenger’s seat in the front of the car.  Clement, our Burundian companion, had stepped into a nearby shop.

Burundi ranks among the poorest countries in the world and the street was filled with impoverished people struggling to make an income by whatever means possible, including criminal activity, if necessary.

There was a tap on the window of the car from …

Halfway House is three miles or so from High Ham. Lying on the Langport to Somerton road, it is the pub for the village of Pitney. It is a pub that is packed on summer’s evenings.

Much of Halfway’s custom is due to the excellence of the chef, who is probably a distant relation, Hugh, her father, and my mother coming from the same hamlet of Pibsbury, between Langport and Long Sutton. Hugh’s photograph is among a collection of black and white prints that hang on the walls of the …

Wandering westward on the last evening of June, there was a moment when he seemed almost present. Perhaps it was the light of the evening sun casting shadows that might have been his.

He will always remain associated with summer nights here, walking down the road as darkness fell. This far south in England, the price of longer, lighter days in the winter is summer evenings when darkness falls much earlier than it does further north. It is fully dark by ten o’clock, even on the longest days, so his …