August – explore the world and the heavens

Exploring the world – riders on the shore in France; exploring the heavens – love the warmth of the sky!

Oh dear, almost one week into the month and I haven’t reviewed The Happiness Project. Far too preoccupied with all things female, but then that’s another story…

Now this month I have to explore the world – and it’s started well, as The British Council want to send me to China for a week in October! Aside from feeling a tad terrified, travel should broaden the mind and take you out of your comfort zone – so rub out ‘terrified’ and replace with ‘excited’. I fully recognise that this is a couple of months away and cheating a bit as far as August is concerned but, hay, no one is marking my blogs (or reading them for that matter). And it’s not as if I’m not travelling in August anyway – having just got back from France (which again doesn’t count as it was the last week of July, I really screwed that up), I do have a few days in Somerset to look forward to. Plus hopefully a week somewhere relaxing with my menfolk (an oxymoron if ever there was), providing my passport comes back promptly from the Chinese Visa application process.

Exploring the heavens is something else, given that I’m with David Cameron along the lines of ‘my faith is like Magic FM in the Chilterns – it comes and goes’. Ironically, some of my most spiritual experiences have been in Somerset and North Devon, so there may well be an epiphany when I visit Porlock next week. Though I can pretty much guarantee there will be zero reception for Magic FM. Perhaps I will play it safe and simply take my watercolour set and sketch book as I always do when visiting that part of the world and have a go at painting the heavens (there are fabulous skies over the salt marshes), thus ticking the ‘exploration’ box. But the other thing I always do when I take this particular trip is unpack the watercolour set and sketch book on my return and chide myself for failing to use both, yet again.

Hence I will conclude this belated introduction to the eighth month by resolving that the watercolours will be put to good use. Honest.