It came to him that he didn't like holidays. . . . They bore down on you. Each one always ended up feeling like an exam . . .

We used to come down and play on the playground on holidays.

This is it. The summer guest birds are gone. The last week of summer is upon us and fall is just around the corner. You blinked, and suddenly it’s almost the end of summer! Let’s blame it on September, for getting it a speeding ticket. Bye bye summer time. We enjoyed every single moment! The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the stunning, the not-so-glamorous and awesome moments. Summer 2013 was pretty incredible! We heart it. The tans will fade, but the memories will last forever.

I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I stayed, the more asinine the attempt seemed, and that what I’d become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilisation, right and wrong.

You have so much to offer, she was often told, as if she had a tray of cigarettes and candy perpetually strapped to her waist.

You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.