Thomas and Anne Rost, as promised, aboard their new sailing boat on the Havel today, close in fact to where we used to live in Berlin back in 1979-81.

A lovely day sailing and mooring and swimming and lunching in very warm early summer sunshine.

Thomas and Anne were allowed, legally and after years of waiting, to emigrate from East Germany just two years before the Wall was opened in 1989, at a time when no-one could imagine the GDR coming to an end so abruptly and so soon.

With their two kids Alena and Tobias, they’ve made a very good life in West Berlin, and it’s so lovely to meet again 10 years after I last visited them, and more than 30 years after we first met back in East Berlin. Picking up where we left off, and again bringing home the power of friendship and affection.

I’m looking forward to cycling on tomorrow north from Berlin to Chorin, to visit Trulla and Kurt Hildebrand, parents of our absolutely most succesful au pair ever Susi who was with us in Barnet in 1991-92. But if there’s one city outside the UK where I could most easily live, it would be Berlin.

Civilised, modern, friendly, the very best of Germany. Of which, as you now know, I am very fond!