Well it's been 4 days now since barbeques were mothballed, tin foil taken down from windows, torches put back in storage, name badges sentimentally retained and sand beaten from trainers, jeans, tops, socks, hair, armpits, bikinis, pockets... Yes, believe it or not, it's only 4 days since Home Focus ended. And yet it feels like a lifetime ago...

There's something so idyllically smooth about the way the Home Focus morning glides into afternoon, afternoon slips almost imperceptibly into evening, and evening gently nudges you towards night where the offer of bed or beach keeps you equally happy either way.

The contrast between Home Focus-ville and London is vast (bar the 4x4's)... It can't be right can it, that in London your brain learns instinctively to file the noise of sirens, screeches, shouting, screams... swearing... as a white noise foundation? The rage of the City becomes a Londoner's silence. 

In London, every second seems crucial - 7 minutes before the next Piccadilly line train?! You're having a laugh?! I should've walked... should I have walked? Maybe a bus, yes a bus. I'll get a bus, but what if it doesn't come for another 10 minutes?.... the stress, the panic, minutes becoming like seconds as you wish them away in their deliriously delaying futility... another day frittered away under a cloud of needing to make every second count... but ironically wasting the hours in needless anxiety, ending up at the same place calmness and patience would have taken you to anyway.  

However, walking slowly down to the beach under a sun filled sky, the contrast became obvious as, rounding a bend, the genuine silence is nudged awake by distant crashing waves... and, as you reach the sand, toes in the sea, the only decision to make is whether to sit or stand to appreciate the immensity of Nature's uninterrupted horizon spreading out before you.

The clocks could stop ticking, the world could stop turning, and it really wouldn't matter... time's irrelevant when you're in the presence of perfection...

 "There is a time for everything,
       and a season for every activity under heaven:

  a time to be born and a time to die,
       a time to plant and a time to uproot,

  a time to kill and a time to heal,
       a time to tear down and a time to build,

  a time to weep and a time to laugh,
       a time to mourn and a time to dance,

  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
       a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

  a time to search and a time to give up,
       a time to keep and a time to throw away,

  a time to tear and a time to mend,
       a time to be silent and a time to speak,

  a time to love and a time to hate,
       a time for war and a time for peace."

 (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8)