Daniel sees visions in the night:

“I gazed into the visions of the night. And I saw coming on the clouds of heaven one like the son of man…”

I was clearing out an old shed and came across a manifesto I had written when trying to become secretary of the Durham Union. It was fairly ridiculous. Full of the self-deprecatory style of a self-conscious student. I lost. And I took the long train home to be consoled. Once again, I emerged from that train forty years ago. London was the same yet different. Grimier. Routemaster buses and a double-decked No. 9 plying its way all the way from the West End to Barnes suburb. Now it is merely a West End attraction.

But I dreamt that when I went to that terraced house in Barnes, my mother was there as she always had been when I came back from school, comforting and secure.