Some months ago, when the world outside our cottage was warm and sensuous and swifts were piercing the air above the village with their shrill screeching and the late afternoon light was casting a glow of golden loveliness over the roses growing as a delicate frame around the windowpanes, I was sitting at my small rolltop desk tucked away in the corner of the living room, quietly working. In the background and filling the room with such feeling, I was listening to the second movement of Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto, and the music, deeply stirring, took me back to a moment in my life, earlier in the year, when I had travelled on my own to London.

And what an adventure it turned out to be!

Arriving at Paddington Station after an hour or so-long train ride cutting through the English countryside (and seeing a fox foraging near the tracks outside Kemble), I then hopped on my usual bus that wound its way through the back streets of the city and eventually dropped me off at Trafalgar. After a quick catch-up coffee at Pret, I made my way across the bustling square, up the steep steps, and into the sumptuous halls of the great National Gallery.

And truly, what an experience, what a privilege, to spend time soaking in the works of Rubens, Turner, and the exquisite Caravaggio’s, as if time-travelling along a deeply metaphorical journey that touched on all that is refined and noble and quite magnificent in the human spirit.

Afterward, I still remember the feeling of walking out the vast doors of the building and into the early evening light and looking across Trafalgar to the clock tower at Westminster in the distance; just taking it all in... breathing in the myriad smells of the city, the exhaust fumes predominating! and musing on so much noise and activity after my quiet life in faraway Cape Town...