On the Sunday evening after the man burns there is a much more sombre affair when the temple, built by artist David Best, and this year looking very like something you might find in Marakesh, is burnt. In the afternoon we rode out to it. It wasn’t the first time we had visited the amazing structure, but this time felt very different. People had written messages, pinned pictures and left keepsakes to friends and family who they had lost. The idea being that, as the temple burnt, these tokens would be sent skyward and reach deceased love ones wherever they are now.

There was a black and white picture of a handsome atheletic looking man, taken in the fifties, with the words ‘Dad, thank you for all the ski trips and for giving me the courage to be myself’. Someone else had pinned a copy of a newspaper artile about woman who had shot her husband and then herself following years of abuse by him towards her and her children. Next to it was pinned a letter from the dead woman’s, now grown-up, daughter explaining to her mother how she felt. It was an extrememly emotional place to be, and there were many people silently crying for their own memories, or after readng someone elses.

We drove out to the temple burning on Trixie but, as usual, lost everyone in the crowd. Rob and I watched the burning in silence and then wandered out into the desert to gather our thoughts on the last night before we were to leave. We are not sure when we got home, but Bruce and Yvonne were still up so we had a drink with them and then crashed.