January: it promotes the sluggard, takes everything and gives nothing. Action and progress are at a discount. It doesn't even snow.
Time then to plan for the year ahead, time to get out the charts, the notebooks, the well-thumbed copy of My Side of the Mountain. Sharpen the knife, find a ball of string and empty the rucksack of last year's leaves.
Look at the map. Look at Berkshire, think late March when the frosts are not so fierce. Long meditative evenings at the bivouac in the Bracknell forest; a rabbit liberated from the Sunningdale bourgeois, firepit-roasted; a furtive excursion to a newsagent on the skirts of Wokingham for chocolate bars; flaming sunsets over the Great Park.
You could even lose yourself for a whole summer in the infamous Winnersh Triangle.

comment