ONE YEAR ON

I’m sorry if I’ve been in a bit of a “mood” recently. It’s not your fault, it’s just that, as I was trudging back and forth to the office over the past week or so, battling the other traffic and the cold and the damp and the general air of malaise and gloom, I remembered that exactly one year ago, at precisely this most mood-dampening and dreary time of the year, I was in California, bouncing around in the sunshine bright with entire days available to be filled to the brim with doing exactly what I wanted to.

Obviously, it wasn’t all bright sunshine. On last year’s “leap day” (the one day from that trip which I can honestly say hasn’t been duplicated this year…) I was trudging through the fresh snow of Yosemite Park, although somehow their cold, damp, wet and miserable days don’t seem quite so bad as our cold, damp, wet and miserable days…

The rest of the time it was all two lane blacktop, fine dining and glorious bright sunshine, and I’m really, really missing that at the moment, especially as I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever be able to summon up the free time and the resources to ever make it back there.

So, if I am coming across lately as being really miserable (and I am…), then that’s probably why… because, whilst it’s great to have fabulous holidays to look back upon, they don’t half bring the grim reality of the right here and the right now into sharp and brutal relief…

Ah, well, time to bask in some fond memories again, have another look through last year’s photographs, and try to imagine the warm sunlight on my face and that oh-so-brilliant light which never ceases to surprise me…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Better now…

(Well, a bit…)