George Barker, poet and beloved husband, warbling cowboy songs into his glass and declaiming Hopkins and Houseman in The Drinking Room, Five entrancing baby cherubimos, rolling and bouncing about in a big brass bed, before growing up at breakneck speed.

The ecstasy of writing, the dither of procrastination, and the endless adventures to be had in the wild realms of the imagination. The outrage of death, the loneliness of widowhood, and then the surprising joys of dereliction: of moving very slowly round the garden in a shapeless coat, planting drifts of narcissus bulbs for latter springs.