Such are the complexities of distributing this particular edition that we are going to press on August 31. August should be the month when politics are out of bounds. Our leader quite rightly used it to recharge his batteries. After all who relishes canvassing, or being canvassed, on holiday?

Not that August has been a holiday month for us for many years. When the boys left school August became the month when I learnt to live at home. The postman arrives with a heavy sack each day but I work at my own desk, or better still in my hut in the garden, looking out over the rose bushes, and through the apple trees to the fields beyond, a pair of binoculars by my side so that I can break off my dictation or my scribbling to watch a wagtail or a whitethroat, or just listen to the sounds of summer.

Because there are never many public engagements I can take time off for a rather more leisurely lunch, sometimes on the terrace, sometimes under the apple trees. Lunch is a meal I don't like to spend much time on in London but on a proper summer day (and we have not had too many of those) there is nothing more inclined to induce a feeling of well-being than a languorous lunch. Better still if it is shared with friends. We have had some good lunch parties this summer including one where we lunched with friends across the valley, and another when we gave a 65th birthday lunch for a very special friend. August is a time for friends and family. We had our younger son and his wife, over from Hong Kong, with us for some days and that really was time for catching up on news and gossip.

And August is a time for excursions too. Our first, like almost every August for the last 20 years, was to the annual agricultural show at Burwarton in Shropshire. One of the tents is called “A Taste of Shropshire” and certainly the show is that in every way. The nicest thing is that I am just a member of the Agricultural Society, not “the” Member, so it is an off duty day.

When we head west into Shropshire or go further still into Herefordshire, we have the inestimable benefit of good but empty roads. Even at the height of summer a dozen cars in a line is the nearest you get to traffic congestion. We had a day dodging the rain and browsing in the bookshops and antique shops of Ludlow, enjoying a memorable wedding anniversary day lunch at The Merchant House. Ludlow is often referred to as the gastronomic capital of England. Certainly there are more Michelin starred restaurants in this most beautiful of market towns than anywhere outside London. The Merchant House was the trailblazer and still earns the highest marks in most of the guides.

Then one evening we went to a neighbour's and saw a splendidly spirited performance of The Tempest in his garden. Listening to those marvellously moving and melodious words in a garden at dusk, champagne in hand, is as fine a way to spend a rural evening as I can imagine. But without doubt the highlight of our excursions this year was a week later.

We set off early on a Friday morning and drove in glorious sunshine to the book capital of Britain, Hay on Wye. When we first visited Hay 30 years ago it was somewhat forlorn and neglected - and then the first of the book barons came. Within a few years it seemed that almost every other shop was a bookshop and spending a day there, browsing, and, inevitably, buying, is a treat indeed. We drove off, after lunch, through the Golden Valley to Hereford, having acquired about 20 various volumes. I picked up a beautifully bound edition of Max Beerholm's The Happy Hypocrite: a fairy story for tired men, and another of Matthew Arnold's poems, and yet another of Stevenson's, published in 1912 but completely uncut.

Hereford was the purpose and the highlight of the expedition. It was the final day of the Three Choirs Festival and we had tickets for the centenary performance of The Dream of Gerontius.

Before that I wandered into the Cathedral for Evensong. The three seminal influences on the English language are Shakespeare's plays, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Authorised Version of the Bible. No one would seriously propose that Shakespeare be no longer studied or performed, and yet all over England, out of some extraordinary arrogance that “ordinary people” cannot be moved by extraordinary language, prelates and priests have dispensed with the Book of Common Prayer and King James's Bible. As I sat in the cathedral I felt more strongly than ever that wilfully to suppress these glories of our language is as great an act of cultural vandalism as the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The Dream itself was a magnificently powerful performance. Every seat was taken and we came out into the night, to the sound of distant thunder, a roll of drums for the majesty of Newman and Elgar.

On the Saturday morning we wandered around Hereford and walked by the river and looked over at the Cathedral. Some things in this frenetically changing world are timeless and of enduring worth.

August Bank Holiday saw our village show in Enville. It was gratifying to see the number of villagers who had entered into the spirit of the thing by submitting their prize leeks and tomatoes, and flower arrangements, and needlework, and all the other things that make up real England.

Yesterday, as the month came towards its end, I put on my historic churches hat (I am president of the Staffordshire Trust) and went off to visit two churches outside the constituency where I have become appeal patron - Hilderstone, a gem of an 1830s church, complete with all its box pews, and Ingestre, perhaps by Wren, perhaps not, but most certainly one of the glories of English 17th century church architecture, and now threatened by an infestation of death watch beetle. Then it was on to Lichfield where we had begun the month with a Service in the Cathedral to mark the 100th birthday of the Queen Mother, made memorable by a Lesson read, with great feeling and strength, by a lady who was about to be 104.Tomorrow into September and a month punctuated by visits to London and meetings. Because of them we have had to abandon our original holiday plans. So perhaps we should have had an August holiday after all. Perhaps not, for no temporary holiday can really rival the permanence of proper domesticity.