Rod and I stopped there and lounged among the flowers, in a dry westerly wind, talking about the downland poet Edward Thomas, the downland painter Eric Ravilious, and why I should never have slept in Chanctonbury Ring.
Three hours later, somewhere over Iowa or Indiana or some other equally flat, patchwork landscape, while my wife slept and my kids watched a movie they'd never be allowed to see at home, I hauled my laptop out and fired it up.