I’mve high-jacked this week’s Photo Friday as I enjoyed yesterday’s dip in a Hampshire trout stream so much.

I was cycling back to a station after a hot talk in a school. My smart clothes were tight and uncomfortable and it was swelteringly hot. Then I cycled over the River Test.
Brakes on! Uncomfy clothes off! Into river! WooHOOOoooo!

This is why, despite having seen many lands, I am still happy to call England ‘home’: the light filtering green through lazy willow trees, the languid streaming of emerald river weed, the patches of smooth pebbles to sit on, shining and smooth as gold. The drifting water tugging me gently, persistently, cool and cleansing. The trim trout, noses upstream, holding their position with the merest of muscular twitchings. The sun’s clean white heat on my face until I inhale a lungful of sweet river air and dip down into the strange gurgling, muted, translucent world that knows no sponsorship frustrations or celebrity-obsessed culture. A lungful of nirvana.

After my swim I sat beneath some trees to dry off. I listened to the Into the Wild album on my iPod and began scrawling structures for my India book in my journal with more vitality than I’mve managed in the last few torpid, claustrophobic weeks in London. Where espresso has failed, a stream in Hampshire succeeded.
I am one day nearer to my next expedition and my recent writer’s block has been burst. It’s a good beginning to the second half of 2009.