A few weeks of Algarve sunshine, swimming in the pool and messing around in the ocean, barbecues and terrace tables, a quietus for the family (both kids and their partners along - and they really do make the holiday). They mostly go for Sangria or Pimms, and I mostly sup something half-decent, white and well-chilled. Then occasional Portugal beer is a treat, too. Don’t drink much beer as a rule, but in the hot sun, there’s little to beat it. Took out a small boat with a Guide on the Ria Formoso, the natural park reserve set among islands off Faro. Plovers, grey herons, egrets (their white cousins), spoonbills, flamingos and storks; a Little Bittern or three, cormorants and a really sweet shag lurking among the grasses off the dunes; shearwaters and grebes – it rather took my breath away, spotting them all, then writing them down, with the great help of our guide. I wouldn’t have known them by name, not most of them, without his help. And he was using my own favourite guidebook, Collins Bird Guide, in English! Clever young fellow.

Found the Sunday papers in Almancil and felt good to see our “Sold Out” ad for Birmingham Symphony Hall in the Mail On Sunday. The villa had, unusually, satellite TV. We didn’t switch it on, though, for over two weeks. Why would we? But we got it running to watch the Olympic Games opening ceremony, in Dutch. Reason being, the villa owner is a Dutchman and his Sky card is tuned in for his own family’s benefit, that is to Dutch channels, nothing  except Sky news in English. But after reading the reviews in the English papers the next day, we were quite glad we hadn’t had to sit through the inane waffle you all suffered. Can’t remember his name now, and had never heard of him myself (probably says more about me than him, I admit), but I read some of a male commentator’s crass remarks and you do wonder, where do they find them, the Beeb? Watching the ceremony, without the dubious benefit of discernible commentary, we were all feeling quite sorry for the sweet, elderly am-dram chap in the stovepipe hat, wandering from spot to spot, appearing lost in a directionless part. Turned out to be Sir Kenneth Branagh. You couldn’t make it up.

Barry Wickens must be the most loyal friend a man could wish for. He took his wife and two young kids to Cyprus for three weeks, and in that time, twice flew off to play festivals for me. He flew to Gatwick and got whisked to the Wickham festival, then back to Cyprus next morning; and to Bilzen in south-east Belgium, near Maastricht the on the following weekend, where we played a rousing set to 15,000 in the market square on a warm evening, then got driven back to Brussels airport for a flight back to Cyprus. What a trouper.

The Olympics gripped me far more than I thought they would. Most times, I can’t wait for the first week to be over (all that swimming, all that cycling), but this time, what a thrill some of those events were. On the river, with those two fabulous women, I swear that at times, if you half-closed your eyes you would have seen, like me, only one person in that boat, such was their synchronicity. And that face, that gaping mouth and disbelieving stare, her silent screams, as her partner leant back and around and panted the immortal words: “We’re going to be on a stamp”, made for lachrymose and wondrous viewing. Yes, I wept. And on to the Paralympics then: how do they do it? How can it be done? How determined are they? Where does such heart stem from? Who never told them it can’t be done? Why weren’t they told it can’t be done? Because it can be done, that’s why. It can be done if you have the heart and the will and some talent for your chosen sport or game. That’s why they and many of us have always preferred to say, “Yes, you can” rather than something else, anything else. Because nothing else is good enough if you’re to help another through difficulties, through handicaps, through sickness, through life itself. “Inspiring” doesn’t come close to adequately describing the effect those athletes had on anyone watching.

To Shakespeare’s Globe for the first time, to see the immortal Mark Rylance do a comedic turn as the wretched Richard 111. As with the great achievers of the two Olympic Games, what Rylance does up there is something else. Whatever it is, this Charisma, he has it in spades. As did Marc Bolan, whose 35th anniversary of his death we celebrated last Saturday at Shepherds Bush 02. The Lartey Sisters joined me and Barry for an acoustic Lofty Skies, from Marc’s ever-sensational album A Beard Of Stars (check out Elemental Child among a clutch of beautiful melodies and wildly erotic hippy-gumbo poetry).

That was my summer then. Autumn now and, on the land, we get a very different sight from this time last year. Barely a plum to be had, few apples and about 25% of the usual quota of cherry plums we would expect; few hazel nuts and not a walnut. It was a very wet summer. Global warming? I don’t know. It’s Britain. We’re used to these fluctuations. I’m over it.