Taking a break

it’s been a little while, since I last took to these pages, and the year has moved on with alarming swiftness. It’s fitting, perhaps that I’m sitting at a hotel desk in Milan to write this, given that travel has played a very important part in my life for the last couple of months. Last year as a newly single man, dealing with holidays was a problem. I hadn’t really solved. They say going on holiday with somebody is when you really begin to know them, and I don’t think I’d ever been on holiday with myself. When I did, I realised was that if I’m not going to lie around on the beach all day and have a nice dinner in the evening, something I think that is much better done as part of a couple, then I needed things to do on my holiday So I planned three trips away centred around having activities. And the one part of a holiday that would still be missing-that of sharing it with someone-could be achieved by a daily blog post on social media. So my keen followers have been with me to the Arctic Circle to race around in a husky drawn sled and spend a shivering cold night, waiting for a Disney like Vista of the Aurora Borealis. They have had a long weekend break, enjoying the high life of New York and Broadway, and in late May, they will also come with me to the land of the rising Sun for kabuki, sushi, and a little bit of noh. I enjoyed writing the posts, and hopefully they seem to have entertained, so they achieved two objectives. Writing to demand and to a deadline. Making sure that I had something posted before the end of each day, and also helping me to distil the essence of each particular day. I found it very difficult through the winter to distinguish one day from another. Working days were working days and days at home with days waiting for the evening to draw in. As the night’s draw out that’s become much easier. Sunshine seems to bring energy in the sense of making the world easier to deal with. For so many of us this winter was hard. Hard to find the money for the things we wanted to do, and hard physically in the sense of spells of continued cold, weather. My new home is snug when all the heating is working. When it’s not it takes a little bit more time to get things together. I have acquired some new neighbours, two actors who have bought the boat alongside mine and as we have a music producer, another actor, and a stand-up comedian on the pontoon, I think it’s high time we started to, form our own repertory company. The pontoon players- hmm, it has a certain ring to it. This won’t be the first time in my life that dealing with days of unemployment has been made a little easier by sunshine. Taking to a lawn with a good book and a cold drink can cover a variety of vacancies in one’s life. Mercifully, I’m gainfully employed until the middle of May. After that, I think I’ll let summer do it’s worst. after all, one could always take a holiday.