The Andrew Diet of Leaves, Air and Imagination

This beautiful big spider started building a web in my window recently. He was a little too large for comfort, so I put him in the back yard. Two days later I came home late at night to find that he had climbed back up two stories to my wide-open window and was building a large circular web. At that point I didn't have the heart to destroy his work and I respect the effort so much that I simply layered up for the night and left the window open. He stayed there for two days before I escorted him to the FAR end of the back yard this time.

As part of my literary pilgrimage series, I visited Oxford recently and hunted down the grave of C.S. Lewis. It turned out to be an unassuming marker in the churchyard of Holy Trinity in Headington on the city's outskirts. Nearby I also visited his house and the forest reserve through which he would wander when dreaming up his Narnia stories. Having forgotten about Daylight Savings on the Sunday morning, I got up an hour earlier than I realised and wandered about in solitude through the Oxford University Botanic Gardens.At the far end of the Gardens I took a seat in the chill morning shade and had a look over my map. To my great surprise, I discovered that I was sitting on Will & Lyra's seat: the very spot where the main characters of Pullman's Dark Materials promised to meet on Midsummers Day. I rippled with goosebumps when I realised. A little red-breasted robin flew up to me and said hello while I sit - I'm sure he was dying to say something.

Naturally, no trip was complete without paying my respects to the aesthetically pleasing dead. The St Sepulchre's Graveyard was overgrown and rambling, full of memories and ghosts.