39 hits last night, it would appear, and a new Follower in Denmark, I notice! How I love your country, sir/madam, for it was there that I achieved my mountaineering zenith by climbing the highest mountain therein, aptly called Himmelbjerget, or, for those of you whose Danish is on the wane, 'Sky Mountain'. Yes, I walked up it one morning and back down again in the afternoon. As strolls go, it was a real pleasure. Seriously, though, I really did love the place, and wanted to stay. The trouble was that in order to do the only decent job I knew anything about I had to be fluent in Danish, and, in short, I couldn't. So I stowed my tent back into my MG and came back across the North Sea with DFDS.

To Newton, once again. Imagine, if you will, three Newtonians walking along the bottom corridor towards me. I was standing at the base of those three steps, just outside our drawing room.

"Sir, if I fell forward, would you catch me?"

"Of course I would."

So saying, the first of the trumivirate fell into my receiving arms. Seeing that he had nothing to fear, so did the second, and so, finally, did the third, calling out as he did so, '"Daddy!!" Flattering, of course, and fascinating to know that you do that sort of stuff at home, o fathers, and I can't pretend that there wasn't a little flutter of relief that he didn't cry out "Grandfather!!"

Before coming on duty in Newton tonight (although I really don't see it like that), I nipped down to Dr Dean's pad, ten minutes down the road, for a bit of cerebral input. I wasn't disappointed, of course, as he had so very kindly laid on a 'bread and cheese plus' supper, complete with delicious wild boar pate (sorry about the lack of accents), Cornish yarg, a superb pea and wasabi mix and a really lovely bottle of 2007 claret, which, after 30 minutes, was as good as it gets. Smooth, warming, and just enough of a tannic hint to make it stand out from the crowd.

As always, with my erudite friend, it was not long before we were exchanging quotations from my other poetic mate, Alexander Porp (that's not his real name, btw), after which we moved to choral music. Dr D was very keen to show me his new Bose player, and I have to say that I was amazed by the quality of the sound that was reproduced. We listened to two performances of Durufle's motet, 'Ubi Caritas', which is a stunning piece, and we both agreed that to have lived in Paris in the late 19th/early 20th century would have been wonderful, and to have visited the organ lofts of St Sulpice, inter alia, and met with Vierne, Widor, Boellmann and others would have been truly remarkable. Rather like seeing Milton and Marvell in the same place, as I mentioned last time. And then one could take that one stage further, I suppose, if one is of a Christian persuasion, and imagine what it must have been like for the disciples, to have been, if one accepts the concept of the Trinity, in the presence of the Creator him/herself.

Oh dear: getting heavy. That's the trouble with fraternising with the intelligentsia: it affects the brain. Still, nowhere near as surreal as transporting pants in a Skittles box, is it?

Goodnight.