In London, the weather would affect me negatively. I react strongly to light...

...If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul.

-Jerzy Kosinski

How true this is! Sometimes, there really is nothing more depressing than a cold, grey January in England. The chill deep in your bones that makes you shiver even under your thick layers every time you step outside... the constant grey drizzle... the utter blankness of the sky... the way it gets dark at 4pm. Ugh! I'm like a sunflower, my sweets - I miss the sunshine so much. I need some warmth on my skin again.

What I wouldn't give to be somewhere like this right now...

I long to dip my feet into a warm ocean, as gloriously blue as the sky above...

...Take a dip with the turtles and a shower from an elephant's trunk...

...Recline on a lounger or a lilo, bobbing on the gentlest of waves, reading my favourite works of fiction...

...Languish in a luxurious bath on a bright July morning...

...and perhaps visit a little cafe on Santorini for a mid-morning cocktail...

*Sigh!* Wouldn't that just be heaven?

My longings are even more frustrated by my friends, currently surfing on the beach and living in a gorgeous bowered garden in Taghazout...

...or swinging off ropes into waterfalls in Thailand, a la Swiss Family Robinson...

Since I cannot join them, I've been lulling myself to sleep with these gorgeous visualisations: a paradise island massage on the beach, or a tropical relaxation, are particularly summer-y!

"I wish we could spend July by the sea, browning ourselves and feeling water-weighted hair flow behind us from a dive. I wish our gravest concerns were the summer gnats. I wish we were hungry for hot dogs and dopes, and it would be nice to smell the starch of summer linens and the faint odour of talc in blistering summer bath houses… We could lie in long citoneuse beams of the five o’clock sun on the plage at Juan-Les-Pins and hear the sound of the drum and piano being scooped out to sea be the waves."

-Zelda Fitzgerald

Love, sunhats and freckles xxx