1969. A small, draughty farmhouse in the Aberdeenshire hinterland. It’s the Doric that’s spoken hereabouts by the local loons and quines.

From John: Up early, showering, dressing, packing, then carrying my belongings of the week across the courtyard to my car. At six o'clock in early March it was still dark.

She was a Connemara girl. Red hair. From a bottle, but still. A wonder.

By the time I made it to Uni I was already pretty pleased with my taste in music. Dylan, Van, Springsteen.

You Want it Darker, Leonard Cohen’s last great song, released just weeks ago. His words have inspired and uplifted me for nearly 50 years.

So Dark Angels Ireland is official. Delighted to have run this first course with you and John.

It falls on me to start the next conversation in this blog series. And I’ve kept putting it off. The problem is this: the last one, between John and Richard, was so wise and intelligent that I don’t know how to follow it.

When Stuart and I first talked about a residential writing course aimed at business writers, we probably had quite limited ambitions.

They are the beloved ones. The ones who know how to work with writers. Who know good writing when they see it. Who know that good business writing is incredibly difficult to produce. They profess their love.

On the second night of our recent Dark Angels advanced course in Spain, once they had all settled in, we decided to ask the eight students to take just a couple of minutes after dinner to say why they had come.

John McPhee has been writing beautifully in The New Yorker for more than 50 years. It’s an omission on my part that until my American friend Richard mentioned him yesterday I had never heard of him.