One of the things that you don’t think about when you’ve got friends all over the place, friends you love all over the place, and family across an ocean, is that when you go on holiday you’re more concerned about seeing the people you love than you are about what holidays are supposed to be about. Which is not to say that holidays aren’t about seeing the people you love, but… <\/p>\n
I have had such a good holiday.<\/p>\n
Last night I sat here, 56 minutes left til the official end of my birthday<\/a> (I survived my Jesus year, hooray!)(although now that I’ve googled “April 17 birthday” I see that apparently not only was this my Jesus year, but it ended on Jesus’ real<\/em> birthday<\/a>), surrounded by kittens and on the phone with one of my favouritest people, with not the slightest intention of unpacking, and thought I am so lucky<\/em>. <\/p>\n The precursor: I spent a week in Cannes at a conference. It’s a rare treat to be a buyer, and moreover a small entity in the buying machine – you get to watch what’s going on, see what people are thinking about and developing, with little or no pressure. You get to drink with interesting people. You see and hear what’s really going on, pitches and PR aside. You get to talk about what’s important to you, to your work, with people who both get it and care. And if you get lucky, you find a really nice hotel for the weekend afterward.<\/p>\n And then I drove to Aveyron<\/a>. I didn’t have any idea how much beauty there would be. After a half hour of winding mountain pass, the Millau viaduct<\/a> is extraordinary, a spaceship construct across a startlingly beautiful land. Afterward, the rolling countryside reminds you that there’s a colour called green that you’d almost forgotten, with yellow dandelions and snapdragons flooding the fields and the castle just on the ridge. Just so. Even in the cold, even with a cold, it was gorgeous.<\/p>\n I’m putting this here as a placeholder for more. When I surface from the remainder of the birthdaying, there will be more. I promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things that you don’t think about when you’ve got friends all over the place, friends you love…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}