Jim, we left the Scottish Borders some 5 years ago and now live in Wiltshire, where we help look after our two young grandsons. As a reader, you may like to know that I have spent the last couple of years working on a biography of the Swindon-born communist writer Ralph Bates, who, amongst many things, fought in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Having started life as a factory apprentice he ended up as a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at New York University. A remarkable man whose life is now hardly remembered.