Four promises, entirely yours.

Fourteen partners, three days, and an agenda I was dreading. Most of the real talking ended up happening in the courtyard, which was not the plan at all. Meals appeared, cars appeared, nobody chased us for anything. Fifteen years of organising these and it is the first one I was not working through.

Our forum has met for eleven years and we have done these badly before, so expectations were not high. Kyoto was different. Rooms were allotted so nobody felt senior. Space was left between the sessions, which sounds obvious and never happens. On the second morning a priest sat with us for an hour in a temple that was closed to everybody else. None of it felt arranged for tourists.

Twenty five years. We wanted the children and both sets of parents together without it becoming a wedding. The villa was ours alone for six days. On the last night the menu had one line from our wedding card printed at the bottom. My mother cried. I did also.

My wife set the whole thing up and I knew nothing till we landed. Eight of us, four courses, and a house where dinner was at nine every night because that is when we came off the last green. Our driver was a Scotsman who knew every field we passed and half the history behind it. Someone had let slip that I collect single malts. There was a bottle waiting in my room that I have been hunting since 2019. Not asking how they found it.

My daughter turned twenty one and wanted Ibiza with seven of her friends. I said no for about a month. One villa, theirs alone, a house manager, and a car with the same driver waiting every night however late it got. I had one number I could call at any hour and I used it twice. They came back at six most mornings. I slept fine, which I did not expect.

I am on a plane forty weeks a year, so holidays are usually wasted on me. I picked a camp out of a magazine and they told me plainly it was not the right one. I pushed back. They were right. One morning we sat with a tracker for three hours and saw nothing at all, and it was the best morning of the trip.

Lapland felt very personal for us. The Northern Lights, private ice floating, stargazing and quiet spa time in Rovaniemi. Everything was taken care of, but we still felt completely on our own time.

I had almost dropped Sicily because of the walking. My parents are both past eighty. They found a house near Noto where everything was on one floor, and the cook would feed the children at six so the adults could eat properly at nine. On the third day a photographer came and stayed almost out of sight. My mother has one of those pictures framed now, and she is not an easy woman to please.