Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

That's a line from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and it seemed to perfectly fit this. The young man was sitting in the churchyard of the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (where Shakespeare is buried).

He was all alone except for his book, which he was totally absorbed in.

I didn't want him to be in focus, as I thought that would be an intrusion. He was so oblivious to everything else around him, that he would have been an easy "target".

My grandparents were married in this church on Boxing Day, 1917. They met when he was sent to Stratford to convalesce after being injured in the First World War. He had fought at Gallipoli and acquired frost bite - but that's another long story which I may tell you someday.

The graveyard looks over the River Avon, and there is a low wall between the footpath and the river. My grandfather used to say that about half an hour before the wedding, he sat on the wall swinging his legs and looking at the river, thinking "It's a grand day to go fishing. Should I go in the church and get married, or go fishing?"

Luckily for me, he decided against the fishing.