The city is sweltering under a record-breaking heat wave at the moment. Since July4th fell on a Sunday, today is a national holiday and New York is a ghost town. I took a train out of Grand Central to meet another friend, Adrian. He and I first met in 1976, at Oxford, as fellow PPE-ists. During the week he heads up the Lincoln Jazz Center and he has a house at Cold Spring, an hour away up the Hudson River. The train runs alongside the mighty river (so wide, so placid) and I marvelled at the fact that such beautiful and wild countryside could exist so near to the city. Adrian took me to his slice of paradise, half way up a mountain. We swam in a lake and, later, a friend took us out on the river. There are bears and coyotes in the forest and turkey vultures in the air and as dusk drew its gauze over the wilderness a deer came to graze in the orchard beneath us and, well, every day has left me with indelible memories. As the train trundled back to Grand Central it occurred to me that age has one great advantage; friendships become old friendships…