Prior to the summer holidays I had started 5k training, and while we were in France I had managed to keep that going. However the last two weeks of the school holidays saw the routine slide, as it wasn’t easy trying to fit running around family life and working when the space invaders had to be watched.

This past fortnight has seen that spiral continue, as my running shoes sit accusingly at the bottom of the stairs. Time to myself at the moment is sitting in a car driving between home and the new schools, and whenever I make it home I get thrown into getting on with the continuing of parish life.

I’m so definitely not a commuter. I’ve liked walking to school and the companionship of a child as we talk away, and stop and catch up with people. I like spaces in the day to move from one thought to another.

This experience of commuting has only lasted a week, and I hope will be resolved in the not too distant future. But I do find myself wondering how those who have to commute manage to maintain that long term. And I wonder all the more as that is what I will be asking my husband to do, as the rest of us will just return to old patterns in new places.

Commuting has certainly reminded me of the need for space when nothing demands us to be paying attention. We all need time to switch off and just be.