Each morning I take a small, circuitous walk of my in-the-middle-of-nowhere-in-Africa garden (an anomaly: suburbia juxtaposed with sprawling, arid isolation). It's desiccating fast. Jaundiced grass thin and dry and spitefully sharp against bare feet; termite tunnels crumble where I tread, meringue fragile. The dogs follow me. My old-gold lab suffers with stiff hips early in the day; it means she walks as if dancing in dressage, a little gingerly: an elderly lady on too-high heels. The cat follows at a safe, disdainful distance.

My mind is full of my son's departure. He leaves home tomorrow. School done. Future yawns. He has declined a place at university, in lieu of another journey, an adventure of a different shape, and I am pleased for I think, for a while, he felt compelled to follow in other footsteps. Convention is sometimes safer, especially when the shape of shoe has already hollowed your path rendering it a little easier. Perhaps my constant admonishment when the children were younger, don't be sheep, struck somewhere, sometime and stuck. So that now he has the courage of his convictions to try a slightly different road.