On what was to be my last visit to the USA, and before heading to Gloucester MA, I spent a couple of days in Williamsburg, exploring and sketching the reconstructed early colonial town, so skilfully put together by the Americans. They are so good at these jobs. I was on my way by rail to New York by rail via Richmond and Washington and to be honest, it was a long, tedious journey. To kill a spot of time, I had my sketch book open on the carriage table, adding a few notes to the drawings I’d made in Williamsburg, when I got the feeling that someone was watching me. I turned round and sure enough there was a big chap looking over my shoulder. He immediately apologised for the intrusion and asked me if I was an architect. I told him that I was not, to which he replied that I ‘was not from these parts’. We fell into conversation and he asked how long I would be in Washington because he would like me to talk to his students and show them my ‘Pictorial Journal’. That’s what he called my sketch book. He explained that he was the Dean of Architecture at the Howard University in the city. His name? Victor C W Dzidzienyo. ‘My students do not look at things as you do.’ he said. ‘They spend their time on computers’. He was genuinely disappointed when I told him that I would only be in Washington for 15 minutes before going on to New York and then to Boston. He even offered to fly me down from Boston if I would agree to his request. I never did get back to Washington, but twenty years later we still correspond occasionally, but now it’s mainly at Christmastime. Actually, to be taken for an architect by such an eminent member of the profession, gave me a big lift because it had been my ambition that on leaving school I would train to ne come an architect. That never did happen, not because I lacked the necessary qualifications. No. It was because my father could not afford to pay the architect who offered me a pupilage, the annual premium he wanted to train me to obtain the qualification RIBA. I was disappointed - very much so, but I made a career in local government and made a success of it. But perhaps fate made the correct choice. Somehow, Pickles doesn’t have the same ring as Frank Lloyd Wright or Christopher Wren does it?