I was driving along towards Tunbridge Wells today listening to Sibelius' Songs - I'd first heard Luonnottar sung by Karita Mattila two years ago at the Proms with my daughter. Staggeringly beautiful and haunting, I've loved Sibelius ever since.

 And as I drove throught the forest near High Rocks, the sun began to slowly creep out onto the wet ferns - pteridium aquilinum I think a friend once told me in Latin - and a magical luminescence shimmered thouroughout, steam rising like spirits in a Viking tale. The Finnish genius evoked such eupohoria I had to memorise the scene for a painting. I stopped the car to reach down for my camera (pity Freya wasn't there to take one of her many stunning pictures - she's going to be, and already is for her young years, an incredible photographer) but didn't have the camera with me. So I stared and stared in attempt to embed it into my memory.