Malaysia, with a picture or few.

It's taken a while, but I think my head is - at last - catching up with my body. I have the headspace to begin to reflect.

Just so you know - there will be no book this time. It was a wonderful, reflective journey and I feel refreshed by it. But I steered clear of adventures. I rarely stepped off the well-trodden path. (And I have other writing plans I'll tell you about another time.)

But - what I will do is post, with pictures, about each place I stayed. And, just to kick this off, I've gathered some images of Asian gods. I visited temples, mosques and churches - and continue to muse on the commonality of people's need to explain life outside ourselves and the stories that become beliefs in the process of searching for that explanation. I make no comment on the rights and wrongs of any belief system - I simply marvel at the complexity of such systems and the rituals that go with them. Do I really need to add that I find it abhorrent that anyone should use anything defined as 'religious conviction' as an excuse for violence?

I have not included pictures of churches - most people know what to expect in those and Far Eastern churches are similar to anything you'd find in Europe.

I was made welcome in several mosques - once suitably covered I was encouraged to wander, to ask questions, and to ponder on the tenets of their faith. They were peaceful places. I have no problem with respecting their request to be sensitive regarding photographs and putting those online. And so the first image is from the outside of a huge mosque in KL.

Followed, without comment, on a succession of religious images. Some - to western eyes - look strange, or fierce, or comic. But they are all sacred to someone. And a reminder of our glorious diversity.

We all makes sense of our lives in our own way. How bland the world would be if we all told the same stories.

Looking up

As you know, a week or so ago, I was in Lille, and in spite of my falling-down bathroom I still have things about Lille I want to write about. I love cities - and not just the obvious things, the cafes and museums and art galleries, the theatres, the general confusion of who is working and who simply enjoying themselves.

I love the corners, the bits we don't often look at, the alleyways (which often whiff a bit) and courtyards with the shock of bougainvillea falling down a staircase. And sometimes - I look up.

In Lille, I looked up, to find many wonderful attic windows which set me thinking: who lives up there?

This, I decide, is home to a poet. She works in a restaurant, and by the time she gets home her hands are raw from hours spent peeling vegetables or washing up but nothing can keep her from her poems. She plays with words all night, falling asleep when the cock crows and waking just in time to struggle back to work.

That little window, right at the top ... three student musicians live there. They have one stove, and no fire, so in the winter they must huddle together for their fingers are too cold even to play a trumpet. But in the summer, when the sun shines, sometimes they open the window and glorious music sweeps across the square below and passersby stop, listen, know that they are hearing something precious.

A young lawyer lives here. He pours over his books till his eyes ache. One day, he promises himself, he will earn enough to own this building, and then he will replace this dreadful modern glass with its ancient counterpart and the building will be at peace with itself again.

Look behind the windows - and onto the roof. That look-out tells a story more terrible than any fiction.

For this is Northern France.