If one was to summarise the events of the past week and indeed, finding ourselves halfway through 2026 already, late nights and wake up calls come to mind. But then again, this is a blog so no need for the synopsis to start in the first paragraph. I am however, reasonably pleased to see the back of July – for a start, the diary is looking much less frenetic and boy, do I need a few weeks of nothing going on particularly. Well, there is that one thing but lips are still zipped for the time being. Mind you, two concerts in the space of 7 days was the perfect way to end such a busy month; the simply fantastic Franz Ferdinand and the somewhat slightly disappointing Kool and the Gang. The first I went to with our Welsh lass Lisa and hopped and bopped my way to blisters; the second I attended along with brother Simon, his wife Alba and friends Gavin and Ann-Marie – less boogie and more bland in my opinion but that didn’t mean I wasn’t limping out the exit. They all stayed up drinking afterwards – I found my bedcovers more appealing. I’d put that down to old age except my sibling and his childhood friend are years above me and they didn’t have to wrestle with the hosepipe as the sun came up.
That being said, keeping the fading flora alive in between all those groovy moves is hopefully worth the struggle as we had another house visit. This time a couple of very nice English ladies who were looking for two houses on a decent bit of land – 7 dogs between them you see (hmm, familiar). Naturally, they were completely charmed by the spectacular dwellings, the pooch paradise that is our acreage and my enthusing of the vast walking terrain that surrounds our little village deep in South-West France – I mean what woofer wouldn’t want somewhere to wake everyone up at the crack of dawn with a barrage of barking at anything passing the gate. I would like to point out that by 9 a.m the only place you’d see a flicker of movement is under the nearest fan which must be a blessing for the neighbours. Suffice to say, they liked the place so we will wait and see but they better hurry up as we have had an offer – way too low but the immobilière thinks its just an opening bid. And I’m not going to yes to the possible purchaser’s request to include my garden pots, the tractor roof or the tractor itself which, I’d like to add if they’d actually taken the whole tarpaulin off, is more of a shell of what it once was than a piece of working machinery. Heritage my nephew Louis says.
Ah yes, back to that wake-up call. My blood tests results came back with one simple (or perhaps not) answer – girl, you’ve hit the red stress zone. According to those in the know, ten years of not dealing with what I should have dealt with instead of shoving everything under the proverbial carpet has ended up with a body not thanking me for it. Hence the need for a quiet introspective August. Gavin (who has been in my brother’s life since I was barely out of nappies) called it trauma – that sounds a little too not me but then again he also added that I’d always been ‘highly-strung’, that’s more like it. But, in all seriousness and as my gal pal and confidante put it – Soph, it’s time you started to prioritise you. Well, easier said than done especially when you really don’t want to unearth a decade of deeply buried drama but with the help of the experts and more importantly those I trust, I’m going to try. There is a new chapter just up the road and to the right just waiting for my pen and I fully intend to write it. Soon…
“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” (Najwa Zebian)
