Back to Pattaya

Apologies for the recent silence. We spent two days in meetings and travelling back to Pattaya, and most of today catching up on overdue correspondence.

With a fair wind and a following tide the next three days should be better, since we visit Fr Giovanni and the Camillian Social Centre tomorrow, Street Kids on Sunday and the formidable combination of the VT School for the Disabled and the School for the Blind on Monday. There will be news and photographs.

Pattaya is always a pleasure, the gardens at the Redemptorist Centre are always tranquil, beautiful, restful. They were close to Fr Ray's heart, and it is impossible to walk through them without remembering him. They are lined by buildings he erected. I joked with him that he should appropriate Vanbrugh's epitaph - 'lie heavy on him, earth, for he laid many heavy weights on thee'.

But instead he rests under a simple, uniform stone with his fellow Redemptorists in another beautiful garden half a mile away.