Buckinghamshire

A two-hour walk through the pasture lands, small forests, riverbeds and local football pitches yesterday morning landed us in a local pub for my first shandy in perhaps 40 years.

A shandy is a mix (in Italy, you would ask for "Un mezzo-mezzo.") of lager and lemon juice. What I should have asked for was a half size, as I am really incapable of drinking beer. a few sips and I am heavy and groggy, which means, among other things, that I am a helluva cheap date!

Walt brought along along a bag of stale bread, which first, dipping in the waters, he then fed to swans, coots, ducks and a lost Canada goose. I hope his trip to England was more congenial than the cattle car experience I survived.

In the evening, we drove into Amersham and had a terrific Cantonese dinner at "Man's," immediately next door to the Crown Hotel, in which the famous bedroom scene in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was filmed. For many years now, honeymooners book long in advance for the privilege. Are they hoping to meet that silly fool, Mr. Grant?

Walt and I have been friends for over 40 years now. He graduated in nuclear physics, was a musician and fiction writer and then, some 30 years ago began the transformation to what he is today - a world recognized leader in energy policy. He had just returned from a lecture first in Las Vegas and then The Netherlands. On one of his many walls is one of his many citations, being declared by Scientific American as one of the great contributors of 2004.

He is devoted to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, Warner Brother's cartoons, plants and good stories. We had a ball.