Remember playing with model farm animals – becoming completely wrapped up in a miniature make-believe world? It had its own reality, its spell being broken only with the next mealtime call.

Now look down at the infinitely larger vista of the marsh. There the tiny black and red coated cattle graze or lie in lazy groups. The telescopes bring them nearer, nearly close enough to pick up and put down. There are five standing hock deep in the water at the mouth of the lagoon with a grey heron stabbing where their swishing cloven footprints have stirred up a feast of mud-worms. Sun and cloud shadows drift across the shallows and the low curved sweeps of the coast-line, sharpening and softening the colours and contours.

In single file the animals wade slowly across the isthmus, each with a wavering twin cow reflected in long ripples. Then above their nodding heads the light catches the quicker movement of brown wings and a pale breast limned against the darker water of the deeper Lake. For one long amazing instant, perfect in every detail, an osprey flies by. In the mind’s eye the frame freezes and files itself. ‘I will remember this.’

Then, like Alice, there is the return journey back up the dark tunnel of the telescope and the sigh of the heart-beat that always accompanies a transition from one reality to another. The world of the bustling Viewpoint and the excited exclamations of others take over.

It is quite a surprise to remember the same sun shines here also.