I'm not sure if there is a cultural loss of innocence specifically associated with the seventies. The oil crisis? The Watergate scandal? I really don't know. There's nothing there on the scale of Hiroshima.

The cultural products of America from this period [ fifties and sixties] are like a vision of paradise or something. I find it utterly intoxicating.

I associate my childhood with two things, mainly: the North Devon countryside and a sense of connection to another world.

I suppose what I can say is that I do feel I have a natural spiritual sensibility.

Nonetheless, I'm not sure this entirely accounts for my Buddhist voice, which tells me forever to give up writing, to give up on relationships, simply to give up. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to me to be the voice of innocence.

To me the seventies represent normality, and, of course, it is a normality that is now anachronistic.

She [me muse] feels most at home in autumn, nonetheless, she is glad of the other seasons and loves them all. Without the others she would be unable to feel most at home in autumn, besides which, she almost feels most at home in all of them.