Escape

Perhaps because this new year was unbelievably good, it’s taken me a little longer than usual to get back into the usual routine, and, as with the last time I took a summer holiday in January – the trip which provided the impetus for the move to Japan – this time it has me plotting a more audacious escape yet: to work less and write more.  As one of my students observed last year, you are a writer, you need the idle life.

So my thoughts naturally float up from packed commuter trains and fly towards empty beaches, pausing midway through a full schedule to recall the luxury of a book a day, are given over to musings on falling asleep with just a sheet as cover, instead of a pile of blankets wrapped around a hot water bottle.  Time to make the holiday a permanent part of life, to realise that travel alone can occasionally look like running away, but if you can find an accomplice it becomes a plan of escape.