Twelve months later

I looked out across the Warwickshire hills this morning, in between hitting tennis balls as my students enjoyed a coaching session at the picture postcard sports ground in Napton, and in my mind I overlayed the aerial photographs from last October 4th, the crimson tide spilling out from the ruptured reservoir, the River Nile turning to blood.

Since I last blogged, I had a chance to meet up with Conohar in my hometown Loughborough (you know how it goes: collect second hand kayak, eat lunch with parents before children head to theatre, meet eco-photographer for chat, watch sister spend an hour choosing which trainers to buy...) Among our many other connection points, places we'd lived or studied (or both), he wondered if we both shared in a kind of dark tourism. Nah. I don't reckon.

I gave him the photocopy of a child's drawing that I'd spotted in the office of Miklos Mold, the Catholic priest in Devecser. He was chuffed, and he's referenced it today on his blog.

By the time we met, I'd been in touch with the BBC's Nick Thorpe. I don't know why I hadn't done much earlier, once I'd got back in February, but that's often my meandering way. I got a really encouraging reply, together with the address of the family that lost a young daughter, and he'd copied in a colleague, Beatrix, who was able to translate my letter into Hungarian. My two youngsters drew bright pictures of dinosaurs, and we posted the bundle to Kolontar last week. I'm hoping it got there in time for today's anniversary.