A seaside mini-break, an idyllic escape, a mountain getaway, a rural retreat. What is it I need to break, getaway, retreat or escape from?

There’s this endless whirring routine: coffee, writing, kisses, school run, run run, work work work, cook clean, bath, book, bed… And then I get up and do it all over again, and what changes? There’s warmer or cooler weather. The flowers I run past push up, then wilt; snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, blue bells, dandelions, cow parsley, roses, and finally, at last, the blackberries are ripe and the wasps are buzzing lazily, then the leaves shock to gold and drop to become brown mulch, then there’s frost on the cobblestones, and cracks stretching across icy puddles.

Habits are comforting. They keep the wheels of the family machine well greased, whirring around smoothly. But habits can also feel stifling, like you’ve left yourself no wiggle room left to manoeuvre or misbehave. You’ve become a crabby old crab whose rigid shell is too tight to hold all the vitality inside, who needs to break and burst their skeleton in order to grow.

When I’m somewhere else, I get to hold my breath, I get to pretend, I get to imagine. Or maybe it’s more like I actually get to breathe deeply, outside the constraints that I’ve constructed that keep life ticking on over smoothly.

It doesn’t matter where we go. When I’m not at home I can imagine myself into so many different sorts of lives. Who would I be if I lived in a little cottage on the northern Scottish shore? What would my life be like if I spent the winter in the mountains, snuggled into the vivid silence of snow.

I don’t know. I probably won’t ever know. When I get back home I always feel how good it is to be Edinburgh Emily, but when I’m out roaming around the un-familiar it’s a ticklish joy to let my imagination wonder.