Once in a while the sun smiles on you

Sometimes life is a messy spaghetti junction of emotion and actions, but at other times all the planets seem to align.

You won’t need me to tell you it’s been a scorcher this week but amazingly, this is the week my family chose to have a staycation in a peaceful village in Somerset.

Better still, an old boy scout mate of mine let us use his house for the week which has a pool in the garden, something usually out of my league.

We have always had a mantra when away together of “it’s my holiday as well”, which means there has to be something for everyone rather than being driven in one direction. So we’ve had running, walking, exploring, resting, eating, drinking, war grave visiting, swimming, film watching,

PlayStation gaming, reading plus a bunch of other things.

You can guess which ones were my pastimes, but because we buy into the mantra we all relax and are all the better for it.

I have loved the opportunity to run in the heat as I missed out on a race in Spain recently. Instead, there I was, plodding through the best that Britain has to offer with historic villages, arrow-straight footpaths through corn fields and taking in some breathtaking hill-top views.

After the action I spent time reading a book (Don’t Fail at Failure by Stuart Humber) that has been waiting for this very week for me to get into and savour, rather than my usual distracted reading efforts.

So I hope that your planets align at some stage this summer.

And when they do, don’t forget our mantra as you and those important to you will come out the other side all the better, I am sure.

Our mantra is there has to be something for everyone on a holiday

RELAX With wife Sarah, and winning with my failure book