Catherine

Light is our key source of wellbeing and Vitamin D and there is plenty of it at the moment! As the hot summer continues, shutters are closed and curtains drawn. It can feel like living in a tent. Any walking ensures all body salts are lost at least once and people are over heating. August has already happened in July and here we are with another month of intense sun and the need to slow down to maintain some sort of balance. Ajhan Brahm says, "When the weather is hot, keep a cool mind. When the weather is cold,

"A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in"- Robert Orbin. He is right. No schedules or place we have to be when time slips by and it doesn't matter. Friends are visiting and a week of sand, sun and sea with an evening spritz is here.

“We need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.” ~ Alain de Botton. This morning we sold a lovely wardrobe for a song. Lifting and moving pieces, unknown muscles were discovered and another part of our history was gone. Other furniture is on the market and it is a fascinating sociological experiment with enthusiastic messages and then silence,

As we continue with the heatwave, it is a blessing to have a cool dip in the turquoise sea late at night. During the day, people are eating fruit, drinking ice cold wine and realising that any elegance goes North, South, East and West. Our cats move around trying to find a bit of 'shade' by lying under a chair in the lounge and a small fortune is being spent on air-conditioning. As we go through the day, Pat Conroy's quote seems apt for any hot place, "Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was

"It's the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed"- Marlena De Blasi. We are in the process of packing up again and will be taking our American bed. It is big with a wonderful mattress fit for a princess and a pea. It was 2010 and we were moving to New York. We had stayed one night in a tiny Holiday Inn and the next morning we asked what the brand was and immediately bought it and it is

A children's book called The Weathermonger, focuses on how society has rejected machines and has returned to a feudal system of agriculture and witch hunting, a world where machines are evil and women are uneducated, and a council is creating a world of fear. After last week, it sounds less and less like fiction. As Elif Sarah says," when societies go backwards and slide into authoritarianism, nationalism, and tribalism, machismo and sexism are also emboldened". We can only live in hope as people rise up and say 'no'. We mustn't lose our nerve.

Emerson said that, 'the earth laughs in flowers'. Years ago, I worked with an older colleague who was in a new relationship. When asked about his day, he talked about it being his girlfriend's birthday. We asked him what he had given her and he replied that she said it didn't matter about presents. From the looks on our faces he realised that he shouldn't have taken her literally! We immediately suggested flowers and called a florist for him. The next day he cheerfully told us that the bouquet was happily received. In previous ages, the language of flowers

A friend is slowly roasting in Paris with not a beach or lake in sight. Berlin friends have managed 36 degrees by sitting in a lake. We spent the day under an umbrella with salty dips in the crystal aqua sea. We are in a heatwave. As we sit inside blessing the air-conditioning, I recalled days of my youth with just a fan. School lessons endured watching friends fall asleep in the afternoon heat and nights spent on a concrete garage floor to keep cool. Relatives arrive tomorrow and we will spend the next couple of days in the

I am an urban hiker. Rather than mountains and trails which end in severe allergies, I love walking around neighbourhoods and looking at architecture, or as a friend said, "More cement!" More frequently, modern buildings are appearing with sharp, glass windows not even apologising for a lack of style or privacy. The older '70s buildings are a form of corporate prison designed to drive a worker to despair with few if any redeeming features and basically just a concrete block. Fast forward to now and massive windows seem to be the style presenting glass boxes hard to heat and