Yesterday was a duvet day. It wasn’t planned, but returning to bed looked attractive at 8.30am having got up at dawn because we heard 100 geese honking noisily as they landed to breakfast in the field next to our house. It was sunny and warmer than expected standing outside the back door with binoculars studying these early morning arrivals. Even though being awake this early on Sundays is unheard of for me, I anticipated being “up and at ’em” after this, so I completed my morning ritual of making my first cup of tea. But then the clouds came over and a breeze got up, I recalled that we are moving through September and autumn is underway where warm and staying sunny is not the norm.

So, back to bed with a cup of coffee and a good book on the Kindle ( Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity – which I can recommend, if you’re interested). I still did not anticipate being in bed most of the day, but the book and the warm duvet enticed me; I fell asleep around lunch time. In the end I did not get up until about 3.30pm, only then because the tea and coffee meant I needed a bathroom stop, and my stomach was grumbling about  having missed breakfast.

To some, I know, a duvet day feels like a luxury not everyone thinks they can afford. I do not believe it is a luxury. For me it is a time of renewal, and a necessity, a time when I can fall into my own rhythm and I have no pressing concerns outside of myself.  I consider a timeout in this way, be it a duvet day or a solitary walk, a meditative sit down on a park bench or a cup of coffee in a boutique cafe as time well spent. In our busy world ‘doing’ is always given higher priority than ‘being’. In fact “just” being is one of the hardest things to achieve, let alone to justify to others. Taking time to be, to enjoy a hobby, to watch the world go by, to taste the coffee, to be present in this moment of your life is a glorious notion, and should not be resisted every time it appears.  Try it; give yourself permission to be in your own time and space. How does it feel?