I had a lovely experience when I visited to Salisbury today. The local bus service is sufficiently infrequent that I frequently end up with having time on my hands before meeting people. Today, I was meeting my stroke buddies for coffee, and had time to eat some lunch beforehand.

So I was sitting there by the side of the river eating my sandwich in the spring/summer sun, and heard both French and Flemish being spoken by passers-by. I mean, fine, I live near a city which is renowned for visitors, but just to be able to sit there and hear other languages was brilliant. It does upset me a little that some of my countrymen don’t share this view.