LUNCHTIME HOLIDAYS

It’s glorious. Sunlight sparkles from the lake like glittering diamonds, the sky is cloudless and free, and the sun is finally hot.

I’m in the shade, sipping a Diet Pepsi. A gentle breeze tickles my arms and cools my face. I could be anywhere I guess: a balcony overlooking Sorrento and the bay, the verandah of an old house on a Caribbean island, a seaside ice cream parlour. The warm weather reminds me.

Of course I’m not ‘anywhere’. I am as usual, a definite somewhere. Work. Well the café by the lake by work. And to wander over here in the sunshine, I’ve somehow managed to duck out of the alternative - a technical demo in a meeting room with the blinds down and the projector up.

Have I chosen wisely? I believe so.

This weather though, seems to also bring with it a kind of laissez faire freedom. At least three people today thought it was Friday. If we all agreed, I suppose it could be. Meanwhile the grass is a green beach of sunbathers in rolled-up shirt-sleeves and pale, shoeless feet, all putting that freedom to work on their lunchtime holidays.

Lunchtime holidays. Why not? Micro-breaks where all you do is switch off from the day job and enjoy the freedom. Still though, this café is filled with dazzling white shirts and coffee cups and lanyards and laptops.

I wonder whether I too should switch my brain off for a while. Recently it’s felt like an engine, processing a gazillion thoughts and ideas - some ludicrous (touring Iceland in an ice-cream van), some exciting (writing songs), and some just deep. The engine has been sparked into life by a few things, and maybe it needs a rest.

So here I am. In the shade with a Diet Pepsi while the fountain burbles and streams into the glistening blue water. It is glorious.