Two

Whenever the weather here gets really cold and grey and dismal, usually sometime in mid-January, when the joy of Christmas and the optimism of New Year seem but distant memories, and the British tulips are still but a colourful blush on the horizon, I dream of being back here. It is Libanona beach just on the outskirts of Fort Dauphin, a town in South East Madagascar where I spent part of my Gap Year, and returned the summer before my third year at university to research for my dissertation. The beach is soft, fine sand, the waters are warm and turquoise, and when the wind is creeping through the cracks of my winter coat on the trudge home on some thankless night in winter, it is where I long to be.