“Look there’s teacher,” I hear a familiar Asian voice, and wheel around to find my class of ten Japanese girls in a giggling huddle behind me, underneath Michelangelo’s wonders in the Cystine Chapel. It was just a week since we said our goodbyes at the end of the Cheltenham summer school. I knew they were to tour Europe but meeting again in The Vatican was hard to believe.

The cockpit told me London’s temperature was zero degrees Celsius! After leaving thirty-degree days on the Malaysian peninsula, it would seem like Antarctica. Trudging through Heathrow airport’s drab grey corridors, at six a.m., while looking out on the frosty scene, didn’t lift my spirits much either. It was supposed to be Spring but felt more like one of those dismal winter days from childhood past.

I first spotted Roshni across the school playground, looking resplendent in shimmering green and gold saree, standing serenely alongside other mothers in faded jeans and worn-out T-shirts. If nothing else, she was a great advert for immigration.

Willem was stunned! He hugged me close, right there on the street outside his doorway, overcome by emotion. We hadn’t a clue why he was so shocked, but it seemed like something very serious had happened since we parted company a month before, in Ax-les-Thermes.

“That’s him! It’s Craig, I’m sure of it!” I had just returned from India on a flightpath that tracked over Istanbul, Belgrade and Frankfurt. Now I was looking at an article in The Independent, showing a similar map: the route of a soldier returning from Cyprus after WWII. ....

I was into my thirties by the time I travelled to Scotland in search of a man whom to that point I had never met: my father! My quest turned out to be fruitless … records informed me he had succumbed to cancer the previous year.

It’s an exhilarating place with a variety of life which most other cities would find hard to match. But for me it was the effusive care for cats which mattered. Like a furnace in summer and soggy freezer in the depths of winter, the diversity of the seasons indicates the multiplicity of this Euro-Asian metropolis.

"What’s happening?” It was my opening gambit to the young woman across the aisle. We had sat facing the rear of the train for two hours, without saying a word; she, heavily engrossed with her laptop, me buried in a book, appropriately titled Around the World on 80 Trains. Suddenly we were forward facing, making me wonder if we were heading back to Lecce.

Dad! Dad! Look dad, there’s the Belgian Ladies.” My younger daughter yelled excitedly from the back seat, pointing ahead to two silhouettes on the side of the road. “You’d better stop to pick them up. It’s a long walk to Spoleto. “Yeah, please dad,” the older one chimed in. “we love the Belgian Ladies.”

After living in Australia for eight years, time came for the customary Aussie pilgrimage to Europe; and for me, back to English roots. I jetted off with my newly acquired wife, to become barman and restaurant keeper in a small Mayfair pub just off Oxford Street: The Running Horse.

It was like a fast-action video game acted out in real-time: The French Connection with a faster car. I watched in horror as we zig-zagged back and forth across three lanes, powering on past a sprinkling of vehicles out for a Sunday morning drive. Glancing across at the speedo simply increase the alarm: 140 miles per hour! ....

I recall sitting near the Rialto Bridge, with my daughter, eating pasta and quaffing glasses of red wine. The month was January – mid-winter - yet we managed to find a sun-blessed spot on the South side of the Grand Canal; placing alternate orders, with the sole purpose of retaining the best table in town. Magical hours: vibrant, yet relaxed, with ferries docking then powering away and gondolas gliding by. We stayed until we ran out of sun, and it became January again,