There is a particular kind of late-December lull — the days between Christmas and New Year that don't quite belong to either — where you finally sit down and realise you haven't written anything since the clocks went back. So: October to now, properly, before the year actually closes and I lose the thread of it entirely. A weekend in the Cotswolds in October, which Richard and I had been meaning to do for the better part of three years.

There's a particular quality of light on the Adriatic in September that I wasn't prepared for. Not the hard summer light of August, which beats everything flat, but something lower and more golden that comes in at an angle and makes the limestone glow. I took more photographs in seven days than I have taken in any previous trip, including Brazil, and I was in Brazil for twelve days. I cannot fully explain the impulse. Croatia just made me want to keep recording it before it s

I've been back from Auckland for a week and I'm still not entirely sure what to do with myself. The jet lag is mostly gone but something else is still settling, and I'm going to try to write about it before it does, because once it settles I suspect it will become harder to see clearly. Three weeks in New Zealand. Our first time back since August 2013. Gemma's first time back since she was thirteen. I'm going to have to write this slowly.