August is called the ‘Silly season’ because there’s a perceived shortage of ‘news’. So editors try to retain readers’ interest by publishing a mix of weird, salacious and frivolous stories. I’m not sure which category this column falls into.

The ‘Silly season’ has a fine pedigree, first complained about in 1861 and turning up without fail every summer since. Our very British silliness is matched abroad by the German ‘summer [news]hole’ and the French ‘dead season’.

But the ‘Silly season’ has a fine pedigree in another sense. We need to prick the balloon of seriousness occasionally. We need to rediscover that we humans are made for leisure as well as work.

The word ‘recreation’ says it all: play re-makes us. And play, as children show, is how we best explore the world and learn our place in it: how to share, how to work together, how to be fully alive.

When we love life and delight in each other, then we may be better placed to care for our planet and imagine a better future. So I hope you’ll be (a bit) silly this month – and find some rest and relaxation after all the busyness of things.

Canon Rob Esdaile

Catholic Parish Priest of Woking & Knaphill