August is a flabby month. It’s the early afternoon of the year, the annual post-lunch slump, a void of time in which I never flourish or bloom. Any sort of aims or progress are a bit squalid in August. Plans and resolutions seem neurotic and deranged. The ordinary things that keep you going vanish, and yet it’s meant to feel like a spree.

All the famous character strengths, in high summer, seem more like weaknesses. You can be conscientious in February, efficient in October, but in August these traits just won’t do. The values of the world alter. No one wants problem-solving, crispness, bustle, or even insights – especially not those, not in the holiday season. If you’re serene, if you can loaf and loll to order, you’re in business. If you like, if you need, to end each day with a list of ticks, then you’re all wrong. Correctness is gauche in August. Puns wear people down. Tailoring and high heels render you laughable. How, then, to shine?

As I am the world’s worst holidaymaker – even my innocent suitcase bears a litter of Hello Kitty stickers saying HOME SWEET HOME – it was agreed that I could have 24 hours leave from the family holiday in Cornwall so that I could go to London and have a city mini-break, by myself, home alone.

If I lived anywhere else, London would certainly be my favourite holiday spot. I even love the things about it everyone else loathes: the noise and the traffic and litter, the curdled milk/rotting vegetable smell of bins, telephone boxes smarting with urine, scary looking gangs of teens on street corners. Don’t even get me started on the good stuff.

Quite a famous poet was dozing opposite me on the Penzance train. It felt terribly intimate. I tried to arrange my aura so it was at its most pale and interesting ... As I drew into Paddington station I was brimming with joy. 18 hours of London all to myself! It was such a rich prospect I thought I might be sick. I bid adieu to the poet, in a friendly way, but holding on to my mystery, and cast around the station for ideas. Paddington itself was a bit like a fairground: a sushi carousel beckoned; blue hydrangeas on a flower stall were in full bloom. A soup and porridge outlet had sprung up, red and yellow boiled sweets on a little cart glowed in the sunlight. I could have spent all day there with no problem at all.

. . .

Home, when I got there, was as quiet as a mouse – quieter even – for the friendly rodent who resides in what we sheepishly term “the mouse cupboard” had upped sticks and left. I put the kettle on and made tea, but my actions felt unreal, as if I were badly acting a scene in a play. It wasn’t that my movements lacked sincerity. It’s just they failed to convince. I sat at the kitchen table with my favourite cup and saucer (Wedgwood Candlelight, now sadly discontinued). The tea tasted like tea. The cup tinkled against the saucer, but it all felt a bit fraudulent and unreal. I read a postcard addressed to a Mrs Abrahams, the woman who left this house 12 years ago, when we arrived.

In the evening I met a friend in a restaurant. I could hardly believe my daring. Not a soul in the world knew where I was. The chef was loitering on the fire escape, smoking and sipping from a tin of Coke. His jacket was so pristine you could still see the tiny pin-pricks in the dry white lustre.

My friend arrived full of excitement, dilemmas, confused reactions and faltering interpretations that I helped her unpick. I made connections between two separate aspects of her life, suggesting wildly that the thoughts and feelings that properly belonged to one situation had been mistakenly attached to the other one. I dispensed my startling theory to my friend in the most humble way I knew. She blinked many times and then she thanked me soundly. It was exactly the sort of conversation you cannot have on a Cornish beach where there are 17 relations between aged one and 30, all of whom have grounds to call you “Aunty”.

Revived and refreshed, I returned to my holiday the following day in a far more suitable mood. I didn’t quite hitch my wagon to a passing surf board, but all was right in its way.

susie.boyt@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/boyt