I DO not wish to belabour my readers on the theme of fruit bats, but when one sees them in sixes and sevens against the night sky, as big as egrets and flying with the same, slow wing-beats as herons, they warrant a few lines.

AS our train from Colombo snaked up the jungled hills to Kandy, ancient capital of Sri Lanka, the rain came down and the distant mountains disappeared behind mist rising like smoke from valleys far below us.

IN Cambodia, we met our son and his girlfriend, fresh from their two-day voyage on a slow boat down the Mekong from north Thailand into Laos, and cheerful despite their 20-hour bus journey to meet us at Siem Reap.

BATS were flitting through the trees as I watched a group of aging Europeans with serious cases of waist-slippage drink Angkor beer and dine on slim frogs at a pavement restaurant by the riverside in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

PERHAPS even more fascinating than the multicoloured birds and butterflies seen on this Thai island just south of Burma are the ghost crabs, almost as invisible and fleeting as ghosts.

BANGERS at daybreak: it was Chinese New Year in Bangkok.

ALONG the south west coast, this is the seal-pupping season.

NEW YEAR’S Resolution: walk more.

OUT on the channel, only 30 yards from the shore, three Great Northern divers are fishing.

AS I look out my workroom window the sun comes and goes in the yard.