I’ve been totting up all the places in Britain I’ve resided in. The list does not include holidays or short stays, only genuine residency. I’m staggered.

Here they are: London, Edinburgh, Farnham (Surrey), Oxford, Melton Mowbray (Leics), Bournemouth, Poole (Dorset), Exeter, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Swansea, Borth (Mid-Wales), Penzance and Cheltenham. I may well have missed out one or two.

This does not include foreign climes: Spain (Benalmadena and Estepona), Paris, Perth (Australia), Kaiserslautern (Germany) and a myriad of short stays here and there. I could claim to be an expert in answering the question in the title of this piece.

What makes someone extend their gap year for the rest of their life? Restlessness, perhaps? Inability to settle in one spot? That’s not true, since I’ve been over a decade in my current city in Devon.

It’s a mystery, especially as I’ve known for a long time that most locations have their faults and are much the same once you are familiar with them. Your own viewpoint is always present wherever you go. If you allow it, it will flatten all differences and enhance dullness.

One spot will always stand out though.

For me, Devon is the pitch-perfect place to be, across a wide range of variables. It has everything. Solitude, crowds if you want them, sensible cities, intriguing towns and chocolate box villages, beaches to north and south, and the greatest moor of them all — Dartmoor. Not to mention cream teas and great fish. It never fails to amaze or surprise.

It’s also relatively peaceful by today’s standards, and is thankfully insulated from most of the big political questions of the day. Even union leaders are more benign in Devon than elsewhere.

The big society is a reality here. Take a look at Northlew on Dartmoor, the tiny village that set up its own wireless broadband service, undercutting BT and all other providers feeding off the internet backbone. Devonians are nothing if not enterprising. They have to be. Big Society writ large.

While Cornwall can at times seem like the Wild West, Devon is for ever civilized and tidy. It’s the perfect county for a writer, even better for a contemplative, superb for a conservationist.

This is not a hagiography, nor a billet-doux to a patch of red soil. It is nothing but the unadulterated truth.

The Royal Mail, it is said, intends to abolish counties for delivery purposes. Those upcountry folk just don’t get it, do they?

John Evans

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Syntagma will be on holiday until Tuesday September 1.

See you then. Have a great Bank holiday weekend.

John Evans

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I read somewhere … I think it was by Michael Gove … that David Cameron’s holiday reading list, recommended to his Shadow Cabinet, includes lots of John Buchan.

What a coincidence, Buchan features in mine too, but only one. Here’s the list:

The categories are, Novels, Politics/Economics, and Philosophical/Psychological.

A bit heavy? To take on a plane, that’s for sure. Luckily, I’m only going down to Cornwall.

Novels
1. Sick Heart River, John Buchan — his last novel and one of the few I’ve not read. A bit gloomy, but set in the wilds of Canada, where Buchan was Governor General.

2. The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers. I’ve read this before but love the smell of the sea that comes over in the writing. Forget the insipid film, this is the real stuff. If you like sailing, essential.

3. Middlemarch, George Eliot. Again, a reread, but it’s so full of insights into human nature and life in general, if you haven’t read it you are less educated than you should be.

4. The Tiger Warrior, David Gibbins. I’m a sucker for archeological novels involving old manuscripts that apparently change the way we see the past … and the future. I even enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, although I knew the premise was (almost) nonsense. Looking forward to this one.

Politics/Economics
5. England and The Need for Nations, Roger Scruton. This very slim volume, published by Civitas, got lost in my “To Read” pile. I always enjoy a Scruton book, mainly because I agree with him about most things political. This one looks particularly tempting.

6. A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, David A. Moss. Published by the Harvard Business School Press, it claims to be “what managers, executives, and students need to know”. Since I fit into all three categories, I’ve just got to read this one.

7. Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg. Subtitled “The Secret History of the Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” it doesn’t sound too attractive. However its thesis is that modern Left-Liberal parties are the true heirs to fascism, not the Right as they would have it. Delicious.

8. The Anglosphere Challenge, James C. Bennett. The description: “Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century” seems a little outdated to those who never believed it in the first place. We should not give up, however, and Bennett’s view on Common Law and basic English values are timeless and worth reading again.

Philosophical/Psychological
9. The Case for God, Karen Armstrong’s latest and, as usual, a must-read experience. “What Religion Really Means” is a difficult topic to expound, but Armstrong “gets it” more than almost anyone else writing today.

10. Presence, Peter Senge and others. At first I thought this was just another of those over-intellectualized North American books that seek to show how clever its author is. But, as Ken Wilber writes: “Drawing on leading-edge understanding of human learning and awareness, it offers a simple but effective gateway to our capacity to become change agents of the future …” And so it does. The word “awareness” is important.

11. The Nature of Personal Reality, Jane Roberts. It claims to contain “Specific, practical techniques for solving everyday problems and enriching the life you know.” It’s got a slightly weird presentation, but if you go with it, it’s amazing what you can learn.

Whether I will finish them all is debatable, but I will definitely emerge in September as a new … something or other.

John Evans

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Isn’t it telling that almost all Christmas gifts have come from the Far East in recent years? Whatever happened to Lapland?

I have to confess I’m hopeless at buying Christmas presents. So is everyone else, in my experience.

At least I attempt to ensure that gifts derive from a cold, northern country where snow makes an appearance sometime during the festive season. Reindeers are de rigueur.

To escape the usual flood of Christmas gift packs of puddings and pickled onions, I usually treat myself to exactly what I want at this time of year. Early thoughts included an Apple iPhone, but the deals here are not very tempting when you already have a better phone and a superior camera.

So today I ordered up my present to myself. I’d been hoping to find a decent old Leica camera on ebay — say, an M4 — with those never-to-be-repeated optics that the Zeiss perfectionists created back in the 1960s when cameras were truly male jewellery.

Hoping is not the same as finding though.

Then, yesterday, an online ad appearered in my inbox for a Panasonic digital SLR with … a Leica “superzoom” lens. It was too much to resist :

It arrives tomorrow, and I’ll be out immediately road testing it around the town. I’ll even favour you with a few shots to brighten up your weekend.

Where is it manufactured? My guess is China — but I live in hope it may be Lapland.

Almost everyone I know is on holiday right now. Mostly they’ve gone to sweltering latitudes to escape the constant rain and floods here in England.

A typical English summer scene — this year at least

Contrariwise — as usual — I’m staying at home this year, although living on the English Riviera is a good incentive not to leave.

Actually, we are planning a major location move in October to a new Syntagma Towers. So, instead of leaving everything to the last minute, I’m going to spread it out over the next two months to lessen the load.

All this is just to say, normal service will continue here at Syntagma over the holiday period. Wherever you’re going, have a great time — and stay in touch.

Mind how you go.