I need it because these last months in the publishing house have been full of upheaval and distraction, full of trips, tourism, seaside baths, good company: happy months, but ones that are dangerously empty.
Already the sandbars off places like Brightlingsea, a seaside town with pastel-shaded bath houses northeast of London, bristle with massive turbines.
Hugging a seaside cliff, the complex of baths momentarily captures natural hot springs before they pour into the Pacific.
Stroll to your exclusive seaside room with an exclusive "private bath" at the Sunrise Guest House (+1 631 668 7286, sunrisebnb.com, doubles from ¢120 a night), before heading out for a lavish $36 seafood platter (well, half a pound of steamed two-claw with baked potato and coleslaw) at the Duryea Lobster Deck (+1 631 668 2410duryealobsters.com).
Anyone doubting the strength of this work should look, for example, at Cavafy's homoerotic "Days of 1908", sumptuously rendered here by James Merrill, with its culminating vision of a naked man: Naked he stood, impeccably fair, a marvel – his hair uncombed, uplifted, his limbs tanned light from those mornings naked at the baths, and at the seaside.
An hour's drive up the coast towards Dalaman airport is the bustling seaside town of Fethiye with its bazaar, Turkish baths and folk dancing festivals.
There were stories of innocent fun, taking friends back to empty houses ("we'd soak our feet in the bath and pretend we were at the seaside"), and fond recollections of so much unsupervised play-time.
In the morning, I felt like someone who, in need of a good bath, had taken one – totally refreshed, somehow, by our seaside salutes to her.
That does not do justice to the elegance of the place, which possesses two gorgeous sandy beaches and which used to be a seaside destination akin to pre-high-rise Monte Carlo: there were casinos, therapeutic baths, luxurious hotels and handsome promenades on which to stroll of an evening.
The race will play out about 900 miles south of Moscow, in the humid seaside resort where generations of Soviet families have enjoyed swaying palm trees and sulfuric mineral baths; the city has about 400,000 people.
