Nothing stays the same...

...yet no matter how far you travel, some things never change, remembers Caro Giles

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I was a summer baby and my star sign is Leo. Both of these things make me happy, although I'm not really a star sign sort of girl. The lion reminds me that I can be fierce and powerful, and I like the fact that I was born under sunny skies. My mum tells me she remembers the early weeks of mothering in the garden of the little terraced house that was my first home. I enjoy the freckles scattered across my face and the way I notice that my skin is sun-kissed because there's a white band on my wrist when I take my watch off. There's a line in a St Etienne song - 'she is the sunshine girl' - that I like to claim as my own.

If last summer was my summer of love, the current one is my summer of uncertainty. My life is up in the air and I am struggling to stay grounded. I'm on holiday in Devon with my children, my friend and her daughter. Seven girls tucked into a flower-filled valley. Devon is four hundred and fifty miles from our home in Northumberland, its landscape far removed from the heather-strewn hills and wide sandy beaches I am used to. From our farm cottage I can see the steeple of a church beyond a patchwork of fields. The sea on the horizon creates an ombre blur with the sky.