are never far away in my thoughts. I rode out to the edge of the city, where the factory line stops and the fields and lanes start. The break is sudden. I was in the country – as wild as the English country gets – and riding through a village of brick and flint houses, a green, the memorial to those lost in the wars. Something clicked. Dead friends tapped me on the shoulder. I’m as close to them now as I was the day they left. Only some of the background changes, and the wear and tear of the miles and the years.