We came to Guadalajara rather unwillingly, but once we there we took to it. We lived in Chapalita. It's pleasant. It has its supermarkets and nice shops and restaurants. The roads are lined with trees and there is a small park on a large roundabout with a wrought iron bandstand in the middle. The Glorietta Chapalita is very busy on Sundays, the rest of the week it is quiet. This is the place to walk your dog and let your children loose, to buy colourful paintings on Mexican themes, to eat sweets and raspados.

I have to explain what a raspado is. A raspado is what we know as slush. The vendor pulls a cart on wheels, really a large icebox with a big block of ice inside. She uses a metal scoop with a sharpened serrated edge to scrape off shards of ice and pour them into a plastic cup. Which flavour syrup do you want poured over the ice: Tamarind, coconut, strawberry, toffee? I like guava.

The first place we stayed at was a small 1930s flat. The walls were curved red brick and we had a veranda John could play on. The soft needles of a spruce tree filtered the light coming into the living room and scented the entrance hall.

I used to walk John to a Montessori School called CIPO which was just at the bottom of our road. John was ony one and a half. He used to stand still at intervals to stop and look.

"Come on Chicks, come on let's go. Mum's waiting."

But once I bent down to try and see what he saw. You can't see what a one year old sees by just kneeling low, you have to bend right down and then twist your head. Finally I got down to his line of sight, and looked. I saw a burst of sunlight coming over top of a house, amplified and reflected from glass. In Guadalajara the sky was bright blue and the temperature ranged from about 28 degrees to 34 degrees C. The first memories of all three of my children were well illuminated.

On our first visit into town we went to the cathedral and happened to be there as Cardinal Posadas was officiating. Showing some religious opportunism, Tere got me to stand in line with John for a blessing. The Cardinal drew up in his rustling white and purple cloak and blessed my son with a look of concentration on his clean face.

That Easter we went down to my wife's home town by the old route that goes past Chapala. Mom and dad were with us. There, in Uruapan as we walked around the portales, I heard the news on a shop radio that Cardinal Posadas Ocampo had been murdered.

He was taken in a Ford Grand Marquis to the airport. The Arellano Felix brothers caught up with him just as the driver was parking his car. Both were murdered. They found the doors pockmarked with machine gun fire. Posadas died in his cassock; his body slumped to one side, his hands clutching his midriff, 

Much later I learned what had happened at the airport that day thanks to Carlos Ramirez. The Cardinal was on his way to meet an envoy from the Vatican who he was picking up at the airport. Posadas was about to give the envoy a report on the links between President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the drug traffic.

Cordoba Montoya, Salinas's right hand - a naturalised Frenchman - phoned the governor of a central Mexican State, relative of the Arellano Felix. That governor then arranged for his cousin's outfit to assassinate the cardinal.

After the murder, an Air Mexico flight took the Arellano Felix away from the scene of the crime to Tijuana. It was later discovered that key military personnel later linked to drug mafias were also on the flight out.

When I try to recall the Cardinal now, I see him raising his  hand, and I see the look of concentration on his face as he gives his blessing.

* * *

When we first arrived in Hampton Wick, on our first visit to the church we sat in empty pews on a weekday morning. As we did a priest ran past in white robes. Following Father John at a canter was Sister Margaret.

I ignored them both. But now, re entering from the left, Father John appeared again, robes flowing, running in the opposite direction. Sister Margaret, still behind him, they and went into the vestry. 

"Something's wrong" said my wife. See if you can help."

"Of course" I said and ran towards the side room.

And as I jogged towards the vestry, the priest and the nun reemerged. Father John said. "We are going outside to wait for an ambulance, you see what you can do."

I saw a man in his sixties lying in on his back in the middle of a large square room. Upright and quiet, on all four sides of that room in high backed wooden chairs, sat 20 elderly people. The skin of the man on the floor had turned grey-blue and his mouth was wide open. The silence in the room was odd.

"Why doesn't someone do something?"

There was no reply, nothing. So I threw myself on to the elderly man and started to press down on his chest rhythmically. Nothing happened. The people lining the walls stayed silent. Glassy eyed. 

Finally, I pressed my mouth to his cold blue lips, feeling the rough stubble of his face as I did so, and I started to blow. But I forgot to hold his nose shut and all the air leaked out.

"Help me someone." I called. "Aren't you his friends?"

Slowly, and awkwardly, a man got up and came towards us. "Blow here, I ordered" and got up to start pumping his chest again. With difficulty the man bent over, and weakly, ineffectually he blew and blew into his friends cold mouth. He too forgot to hold the nose.

The ambulance men came and took over, and trembling, the man's friend stood up. Sister Margaret looked at me smiling. "Who are you," she said, "an angel?

No, a clown. The man was dead. The whole episode amounted to a performance.

The next day I walked my children to the school and the school secretary asked to talk to me about a payment. As we spoke the phone rang. After listening for a while the secretary started to make sympathetic comforting noises and then put the phone down. She explained.

"One of our children's grandparents died in the Sacred Heart church yesterday. That was his daughter phoning to say her daughter wouldn't be coming in."

Realising who she was probably talking about I said "I know."

I day later I met his daughter coming back from the school. She burst into tears, hugged me and walked on.

But what I thought after that experience was this: What if I had remembered to hold her father's nose shut as I blew into his chest? Perhaps I might have succeeded. What is the point of a serendipitous event if you mess it up?

*   *   *

 (2) Since writing this I have taken two courses in CPR.