Recently, I enjoyed a much needed rest on the beautiful Western Algarve in Portugal.

On the first couple of days, I noticed how my feet, exposed to the elements were causing me discomfort and irritation.

They felt clammy, itchy and the constant need I had to scratch and rub them made me feel irritable.

As the sun and sea, dried and washed my feet and turned the colour of them to a soothing brown, I became agitated by a dryness and an itching and a burning feeling which made them feel sore and tender.

I had this growing anxiety that my whole holiday was going to be overtaken by this constant need to manage my feet.

Later in the week, as they settled down and had the appearance of two bronzed sculptor casts, I recognized in their recovery and replenishment, a wider process of healing in my whole body system.

It seemed apt that the pressures of the mind, over exerted, overwrought, over anxious, was mirrored at the furthest extremity of my body by a physical manifestation of the mental fatigue which I had endured for too long.

My sock-less, supported feet, in stylist summer footwear, became the revitalised  and energised extremities which mirrored the composed and challenged and thought-filled mind which had found solace in an intellectual book.

My read had stimulated my mind in a new direction for those few days and taken over the intellectual space from fear, worry and anxiety, and it was my happy feet which tripped my form across the sand, splashed in the sea and lead me to positions along the coast of beauty and of peace.

William Defoe