When you meet someone who’s just truly lovely, you want nothing more or less than to be in the light they radiate. You just want to hang around them and bask in their glow.

I have met a number of such people throughout my life, as I’m sure we all have. One of mine is coming my way next week. I will get to charge up my well-being by hanging around with the wonderful Patti. She’s a real gem……no, gems are cold and hard. Patti is not like that at all. She’s warm, vibrant and lovely. What’s more, she’s one of a pair of completely amazing women because she has a sister who’s every bit as fabulous and every bit as amazing.

Even better is that DM adores both of them too – he loves seeing them both as much as I do.

Patti works with me so she’s ‘accessible’ to me because she comes here to spend time in our offices and to go to meetings. Sally is less accessible because she’s not a ‘traveller’ so our paths don’t get to cross as much as I’d like them to. Isn’t it just a pig-awful fact of life that you meet someone who you adore and she’s on the other side of one of the world’s biggest expanses of water. I have a few of these people in my life. (You know who you are, you don’t need me to ‘roll-call’.)

What I want is to get the pleasure of showing Sally round my new garden. To show her this beautiful, wild space that we’ve become the guardians of. I hope that one day I will get that pleasure. If I get really lucky. Why is this important? Well, because she’s a horticulturalist and I know that she will see what I see in it. She above anyone will notice the Indian Bean tree tethered to stop it escaping in the corner. She’ll recognise the philadelphus even without its leaves. She’ll love the way the foxgloves push themselves out of the stone and into the sky with gay abandon. She’ll see the moor blooming with life. She’ll know.

Patti loves the land too and she has experienced a little of our new world before. She’s walked to the top of the hill, seen the countryside stretching out forever and can even picture the front of our new home because I took her to sit in the road outside the house in a time before it was ours and showed her where we planned to be. Patti will report to back to Sally.

There is something about Patti that’s just so perfectly gorgeous that trying to explain it is pointless. You have to meet her to experience it. So however many superlatives I write I can never do her justice. I am so looking forward to being in the light of my friend again.

You know what they say – absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s true.

Last year, I was photographing wings too - but then they were the wings of an angel.