There is nothing much about summer, is there? It’s dull, the heat is unrelenting and most of the fun people have made tracks for cooler climes, leaving you in a sticky morass of self-pity. You are staying home and you don’t have to like it.
But don’t waste it. July and August can be pretty fruitful months if you can get your act into order and stop actively loathing it. It’s a great time, for example, to catch up with your reading. Just stop and think. When did you last get through a good book?
Expat lifestyle tends to sap stamina for any long-term activity allowing little more than flicking through a magazine. Once you get the rhythm of it again, you’ll find yourself voraciously devouring volumes and wondering how you managed to do without for so long.
It is said a house without books is like a body without a soul. Experience the wonderful satisfaction derived from a sustained read and you’ll never know where sweat soaked time went. Pick up the old forgotten bestsellers and relive happy moments.
This socially low-key month is great for correspondence. Catch up with friends and relatives you’ve been wanting to write to and just haven’t got down to doing so. Good time to get in touch — make someone’s day, surprise them with a “Here we are again” letter...OK, I surrender, send e-mail or get on the cutting edge of technology. Actually, discover the fun of driving along the NET info highway.
You could make these months your cleaning up time. It’s not just tidiness that gets a happy deal, but rummaging through drawers and cupboards is a delightful trip down memory lane full of pleasant surprises. You find stuff you’d given up as lost, addresses, phone numbers, photographs that give the past a fresh lease of life and make the job of setting things in order that much more fun.
Obvious suggestions are often the most successful. You don’t have to fill the August vacuum with esoteric stuff. Most of the year we are frittering away time in inconsequentials anyway. Here is a chance to rekindle affection for things we used to enjoy doing but now can’t find the time or the mood.
Learn Arabic, it is such a smart thing to do. If you know 200 words it is a start. Help in a hospice, do voluntary work, somethnig with children.
It’s a corrupted word, hobbies, but still highly relevant. Go on, do yourself a favor, get back into the “Do it yourself” mood. Write a story. Paint a portrait. Redecorate your room. Upgrade the potted plants. Work on your carpentry, get those shelves up at last.
The list is endless and this is a perfect time to be a little introspective and selfish. You may even find that away from the hurly burly and the madding crowds you discover you actually like yourself. It is also a time for looking after yourself. Diet now, without an audience. Shock them in September. Get those little medical problems you keep postponing addressed now. Change your hair. Experiment, and enjoy it.
That’s it. Like a shop, take stock. Remove the rust from the relationship you have with one another. Do you realize how married couples insulate themselves with other people and settle into a groove, saying very little original to each other from day to day ?
Here is a great opportunity to leap out of the customary and open up the clogs in the communication. Just the two of you doing things together without seeking the sanctuary of superfluous company to make you feel compatible. Literally rediscover each other in the comfortable privacy of home. Take walks.
In the same vein, spend more time with the children. This is lazy, unhurried luxurious time, not squeezed in guiltily between other social obligations, but prime time, one that can be memorable for the children of an era where Mum and Dad are generally flittering figures who come in through one door, linger and exit from the other.
You may realize that August does have a Caesarian loftiness about it and the holiday you missed has been fully recompensed by staying home and making peace with yourself.
So come September and you could be well ahead of the game. When friends have returned from vacation tired and spent (in more ways than one) and wonder why you are glowing with an inner satisfaction, keep the secret to yourself.
