Last week I did what any sensible person does when life feels too loud and my inbox starts to feel like an unpaid second job: I ran away to Spain. My mum lives in a hilltop village in Andalucía called Bédar – all whitewashed houses, pink bougainvillea clinging to the walls, roads you’d be mad to attempt in a hire car and hills steep enough to justify a second breakfast.
She retired there eight years ago with her husband, though calling it a “retirement” feels wildly inaccurate. Her life looks less like winding down and more like a reawakening – the sort of sun-drenched, no-nonsense freedom I’m wildly jealous of. She’s busier than I am, which says plenty considering I’ve been out every night on the trot this week. Catching up requires booking a slot that doesn’t clash with her golf, her exercise classes, her choir or a punishingly hot uphill walk (she once made me join her – I’ve never let her forget it).
