At the start of the year we bought a calendar. I drilled a small hole into the wall, in the corner of the kitchen, and twisted in a hook. The calendar, a grid of squares that so recalls the ones that ruled our family activity growing up, sits there like a kind of nucleus. Some people have shared ones on their phones, I know, but it’s never worked for us. Instead we scribble and scrawl and turn the pages. Once a week, at dinner time, we’ll bring it down and work out where we might be over the next few days.

In January, there were no long stretches to fill in. I wrote the date my book was coming out in, I wrote the baby’s due date (three weeks apart and both on time) and a handful of work things. M wrote in play openings and press nights. I felt the absence of a holiday gnawing softly at me. I’ve always been good at getting away, but it felt daft to plan anything when I was so pregnant. Summer was blank, to be filled as it wanted when it came.

It’s nearly August now and we’ve only just alighted on a plan to go on holiday - first in September, then again a few weeks later. This will be the first summer we’ve almost entirely stayed at home since the pandemic. It has passed in welcome rainfall and watching things - the garden, the baby - grow, in the hours between naps and on blankets, laid on the floor in the shade and staring up at leaves silhouetted against the sky. It has vanished and it has stilled.

August is a funny time in London. The parks dry out. The city empties of its locals and fills up with tourists. When I was working in a newspaper in my twenties, August was the time of lower pagination and babysitting the work experience kids while trying to find something to write about. It was languid in the least relaxed way. I am taking the baby to a festival. We might go to the seaside. We will probably lie on rugs, and look at the sky. I’ll think about mowing the lawn.

What I won’t be doing is sending this newsletter. I relish writing to you all, but I need a break. I have something new to crack into and I need the space to generate those words, instead. This is the last Wednesday letter for a little while and Friday’s savourites will follow suit. I’m also not sure anybody wants emails in August, but if you’d like to read something then there are dozens of issues in the archive. If you’re a paying subscriber, I’m pausing subscription payments until I return in September. If you’d like to become a paying subscriber, you can still do so and you won’t pay anything until then either.

So, a pause. I think we should all try and take one in August in all honesty. Last year I experimented with deleting Instagram over the summer and it felt like a cool bath on a sticky night. When I was a child there were moments when the summer holidays felt endless. We were often left to get on with our own things and challenged if we said we were bored. I think it pushed us towards creativity: there were always books, or crayons, or games in the garden to play with. I’d so love to have the space to be bored into new creativity. Perhaps I’m trying to carve this out.

What to savour in the meantime? Quiet. Connection. Laughing until the tears come. Sausage rolls and packets of crisps and spontaneous weekday trips to the seaside. Who knows? I haven’t lived it yet. When I do, maybe I’ll write about it.

Until September, then. I hope you have a delicious few weeks.