Outside a dark, brooding, tropical storm had rolled in. Rivulets washed across the veranda; rapids foamed down the road; the sky above the Adriatic scowled indigo.

Curled on the sofa in our apartment, I turned to Adam.

“Ads?”

“Yes?”

I paused briefly. Turned my question over and over, like a seabed pebble rolled over by the waves. Took a deep breath. Launched.

“Have you had any revelations since being away?”

“Revelations?” he repeated in that particular way that men do when they aren’t really listening so they reflect words back to you in an interestingly disinterested sort of way.

Luckily I’d had two glasses of wine. I chose to overlook it.

“Yes, like when you go somewhere and you can see your life from fresh eyes and you have all these realisations about life at home.”

This happens to me every time I go somewhere abroad and I’m sure it must happen to others too. Who doesn’t go somewhere and wallow in that beautiful grace of being lifted out of their ordinary lives and given a taste of something different?

Different rhythms. Different sights. Different foods and ways of feeling.

And with all this differentness, you glance over with a long neck, to the tangled mess of routines that you’ve left a thousand miles away and you can’t help seeing it all with clearer eyes. Since being in Dubrovnik, I’d had multiple, club-sandwich style revelations. Some about people; some about myself; some about work; some about life and the Universe and consciousness that have entered the realm of Gnosticism . I’d shed about five skins and grown about five miles taller.

Yet now, here I was realising that maybe men are from Mars and Women are from Venus and perhaps, just perhaps, Adam DIDN’T have realisations and revelations whilst away.

“So have you?” I asked, suddenly on the edge of my seat.

There was a pause.

I waited.

Ads sipped his wine.

Then he glanced at me sideways with the exaggerated vitality of an ancient iguana whose entire being has become encrusted onto the branch he’s been sitting on and is not entirely sure if he’s a statue or a real living creature … and nods. “Yes. Actually babe, I have.”

Oh. My. God.

I was all his. I was eating out of his hand. I was lapping up every word. I couldn’t believe it.

“What? What?” Twisting round, I crossed my legs and leaned in. “Really? Did you really have a revelation?”

Prolonging my agony, he lifted the remote control and switched off the TV, then twisted around, faced me and said this:

“Ever since becoming a chef, I’ve always believed in the perfection of risotto,” he began.

I frowned.

“It’s the perfect thing to cook because you can par boil it and then finish it off in the evening when the orders come in,” he explained.

I pushed my mouth into a sideways volcano. Mmm.

“But whilst on holiday, here in Croatia,” he continued, “I’ve had this massive realisation that I could actually do the same thing with gnocchi! I can’t believe I’ve never realised this before, but its on the menu in loads of the restaurants here. And I LOVE gnocchi.”

Passion had ignited in the belly of Ads and as the lightening struck and the rain thundered down, he reeled off a whole load of mouth-watering things that you can cook with gnocchi. It was profound … in a foodie sort of way.

I let a breath go – one that I’d been holding onto – and smiled.

“That’s really cool,” I said. “Very cool revelation.”

At that point I wasn’t sure how I could follow. I wasn’t sure that I could now begin to explain the coaching system that had just been revealed to me like some ancient manuscript in an archaic initiation of Gorgeousness. It just didn’t seem right. But what was funny and amazing that I was so utterly bowled over by my revelation and Ads was so bowled over by his own!

Both of us, listening to the storm, secretly turning over our own private delights in our own private worlds.

So that evening I decide to seal my lips and instead set to work on my Triple Gorgeousness Metasystem in secret and not even mention it to anyone until it was complete and ready and ripe for the using. That was back in May. It is now September … oooh, Harvest time.

Nestling into the chair, I leaned into Adam and thought about the difference between men and women, the difference between the mind of a coach and that of a chef, the difference between gnosticism and gnocchi and the difference between speech and silence.

I poured another glass of wine, smiled massively and went to the veranda to see this amazing view …