I’ve been consulting lunar calendars to decide upon a date for next year’s retreat; normally I choose the week of the full moon because the dunes look amazing in the moonlight and…there’s that much less chance of someone getting lost at night and wandering the desert for hours looking for the camp.

But the only drawback of the moon is that you don’t see the stars so brightly and there’s nowhere like the desert for looking up at millions of stars and realising that you’re on a big spaceship planet travelling through the universe. It’s enough to make you grab handfuls of sand to steady yourself.

So checking out the dates for next year’s retreat I saw that the full moon falls early in January so we’d have to being on the 4th which is a bit early given travel chaos over the New Year. So I decided to just go for the starry nights option and make the retreat from the 11-17 of January.

I’ll bring some glass lanterns to put candles in next to the camp that can be seen from far away and we’ll bang a few drums at nightfall so any late returners from the sunset can find their way to dinner.

Either that or I’ll tie long pieces of string to everyone’s big toe…