Self Portrait VII

We meet James and Emily in Hyde Park on a brilliant summer's day. This the weather I think of when considering England: warm, with large puffy clouds making the blue sky a friendly canvas. Definitely The Beatles and "Yellow Submarine." Britain looks like a cloud after all. Ben, year-five, and Mia, year-three, offer the perfect companions and the children play football and Frisbee until Madeleine clips a 20 somethings head. I drag her over to mumble "sorry" and when I sternly rebuke her for not being more generous she whines: "but I didn't even know her!" Emily is the Executive Producer at the BBC, whose show The Forum is presented by Bridget Kendall and aims "to discuss and challenge big ideas." Recent shows have teamed Environmentalist Sunita Narain, science historian Arthur I Miller, writer Paolo Giordano. Or Sociologist WJ Wilson, philosopher Roger Scruton, film-maker Clemens von Wedemeyer. Or Political economist Deepak Lal, writer & comic AL Kennedy, Tatar poet Ravil Bukharaev. How cool is this? The Forum is on radio, Internet b'cast or podcast. Emily, like Sonnet, has a unique job and totallly great for it. Before The Forum, she was responsible for the BBC Book Club where I recently met Lionel Shriver. And before that, the World Services Religious programming. She rocks.

Madeleine shows me a pea-pod: "Look, Dad, it's perfect. I am going to take it to show-and-tell."

Madeleine collects all sorts of bugs from the backyard putting them into a tuper-ware, covered with Seran Wrap. She adds a few leaves and a grass or two for their comfort. She leaves the encasement by the back-steps, where I find them this morning.

The car radio chimes the BBC's Big Ben announcement of 6:00PM. I ask Madeleine in the back: "what time is it?"
Long pause.
BBC Announcer: "And the news, at 6PM."
Madeleine: "4PM?"