Sebald and a colleague came to tea once at my house in Cathedral Close, Norwich. We drank Earl Grey, ate cucumber sandwiches and sat in the overgrown meadow under an acacia tree. I sang in the Cathedral Choir and was pleased to show my lecturers round. Nothing impressed Sebald more, I remember as we wandered among the monuments, than the stone darkened by age on an obscure patch of otherwise whitewashed cathedral wall on which is scratched, not without a certain humour, a sobering text from beyond the grave: "All ye that do this place pass by / Remember this for you must die / As you are now so once was I / And as I am so shall you be." Sebald's archive and his books summon memories that make the grey a little clearer.