I am really looking forward to my next visit to Iran, which is due later this year. I love the country, its people, its food, the culture and architecture and the history is mind-boggling. The fragrant smells of spices and herbs in the bazaar, mud walls, easy living and bergamot tea to drink at leisure all day. It’s a wonderful experience.

When I am there, we tend to go out in the early morning to do our sight-seeing and visiting early doors before it gets too hot. After lunch, the family settles down for their afternoon siesta. I find it difficult to get into the routine of sleeping in the afternoon and usually spend my first week updating my Persian Posts blog.

This year I will be doing something in addition to my blog, and I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it before. This is a fantastic idea for any trip, holiday, honeymoon and days out and I will be stocking up on 3 weeks of Iranian stamps on my first day.

Robert Browning

Home Thoughts from Abroad

O, to be in England
Now that April ‘s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That ‘s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!