What is a holiday but one’s other life deferred, if for a wee while? Once I was a woman who read for hours in a warm room, wandered the narrow fish-scaled streets of a small seaside town every day, sketched buildings and strangers, stopped wherever and whenever she wanted just to have a glass of wine. Once I paid attention to the world around me, and the hours were rich and languid.

Of course it has been busy since our return. Office, bar, social obligations, etc. Time sped up; scrutinising my hair one morning, I realised I had aged overnight. At the castle cafe, the garden had faded: its flowers wilted, the bunting frayed, wavering gleams of spiderweb everywhere.

There has been a funeral every other day. A friend’s young son had a stroke and recovered. A cousin of the mother-in-law died after a stroke. The dog, it turned out, has a bad hip, the legacy of a mysterious and violent incident that occurred three years ago.

Life is very fragile in our part of the world; that land of sunshine and flowering trees and white shining houses seems ages away, accessible only by memory.

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