It's another early morning in Paradise, which is the best time of the day when everyone is still asleep except for yours truly who's just starting on his first cup of tea and debating with himself how much of nothing he's going to do today.
Walking along the river and talking to the trees, I wonder what I'd do somewhere else. I'd have to whisper, wouldn't I, or else they'd put me away. Here the only one who might hear me is the odd wallaby, and he won't mind as long as I let him graze in peace.
My best friend Noel told me just weeks before his untimely death, "Don't sell Riverbend; that would be the ultimate sin!" Did he know something that I still grapple with, namely that this is Journey's End, which Julian Barnes described so aptly as "the end of any likelihood of change"? The thought is both comforting and scary at the same time.
