Perhaps 10:30 isn’t that late but as I get more and more tired with this it seems it to me.

The weather is on the turn today so it’s put an end to me sitting out to read, or write. or listen. Instead I sat in the study and sorted the pictures out for lessons two and three. I’m pleased I’ve managed to get on so well and the bonus is that lesson four is a review of a magazine and basically a written submission so that shouldn’t take too long to sort out. A few speedy submissions will mean I catch up for lost time. Working upstairs I caught up with a few favourite radio programmes thanks to the BBC’s excellent Listen Again service. Of course the downside of this is that you have the benefit of hindsight. It has been chillingly demonstrated by From Our Own Correspondent, which I listened to on Saturday and enjoyed so much I listened again tonight. It was a day after filing his report that Frank Gardener was shot and seriously injured. His report contained the line, spoken by himself, “This is not the Saudi Arabia I know”. Very prophetic.

Why am I staying up ? Well I have always been interested in American history and the latest chapter of it is being played out with the funeral of Ronald Regan. Tonight the BBC are covering the parade moving his body to the Rotunda in the capital, where all those years ago he was sworn in. It will come as a shock to many Americans to see the pomp and pageantry of the state funeral and no doubt re-awake the memories of Jackie Kennedy, who re-instated the old tradition of the riderless horse for JFK and of his young son saluting his father’s body. There’s little poignancy in this occasion but the solemnity in which America conducts this occasion is in sharp contrasts to the way it’s behaved abroad recently.