No rest for the wicked

by Steve Leach - Tuesday, 12th August 2008 -

I'm not a big fan of the summer holiday season. It seems to slow the entire planet to a tedious and infuriating crawl.

I'm just entering the second week of my own fun-packed family fortnight in the sun and it's been great, but margaritas and lying about on beaches can only hold my interest for so long. As the holiday continues I increasingly find myself drifting back to my laptop and - despite vehement and vocal opposition - longing for a bit of work to take my mind off the summer blues.

Lately, I've been wondering why we go through this ritual every year. You know what it's like: Trying to ensure a bit of business continuity means that you have to work double-time for a fortnight trying to anticipate anything that might happen before you go, and then when you get back you have to spend the first 72 hours wading through 14 days worth of obsolete emails.

Then are you ready to get cracking? Well frankly no, because now Sue's gone snorkelling in Tibet and by the time she gets back, Bob out of finance will be bungee jumping somewhere near Oslo. July breaks, and suddenly its impossible to set up a meeting in under a month.

Unless you're catching up that is. As your colleagues arrive back from vacation in dribs and drabs nobody can quite remember what's going on, so you'll spend hour after hour in meetings designed to leave you exactly where you were before the holiday season began.

Are people really worried that the UK has slipped into recession? Apparently not, because the entire country is scheduled to be running on a skeleton crew for the next couple of months.

I don't begrudge anyone their summer holidays, but we subject ourselves to vast expense, stressful preparations and airport delays just so that we can leave home during the best weather of the year. Does that make sense?

A wet weekend in Bournemouth might not have quite the same allure, but these days I'm beginning to see the appeal...

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