Ease the back-to-work blues

Going straight back to the old routine is like being woken up from a lovely dream.

I just took advantage of the Eid holiday to head to Kathmandu for a week. It was, to say the least, a "no frills" holiday - we had a bedroom alive with creepy crawlies (as my leech- and mosquito-bitten legs will prove), frequent electricity outages and lack of hot water. My lungs were heavy with pollution the whole week. But I loved every second of it.

It was with a heavy heart that I landed at Dubai airport. Don't get me wrong - I like my life here. My flat overlooks the beach and the beautiful Arabian Gulf and I get to spend my weekends camping in the dunes or watching dolphins. And, of course, my life here is 100 per cent leech-free. Even so, returning from an amazing holiday is hard work.

I woke up and felt instantly grumpy. The lift taking too long to arrive made me angry; the bus stopping that little bit far from my feet made me long to be back in Nepal; and not being able to find my Nol card made me want to cry and to start booking my next holiday.

I don't deal with holiday blues well. I have bored everyone senseless about the stunning architecture of Nepal's temples, the lovely people and the incredible landscape - as if I'm a modern-day Marco Polo and the only person who has taken the four-hour flight to Kathmandu. To accompany my droning, I am armed with an album of 800 photos that I will talk people through, one by one, once I have the chance to upload them.

Besides regaling people with a blow-by-blow account of everything I did while I was away, my holiday blues also mean that I find it hard to get back into a routine. The first day back at work is particularly hard. I stare at my 657 emails (ten of which are actually relevant) and decide to ignore them for now. I open a half-finished feature and struggle to read past the first sentence - of what now appears to be a foreign language. To combat this stressful situation, I propose an easing-in method when going back to work after a holiday. Going straight back into the old routine is like being woken up from a lovely dream - with a big bucket of cold water in the face.

Instead, after a holiday, there should be some kind of intermediate step - in the same way that nursery acts as preparation for school. It would be a bit like work but there would be breaks every 30 minutes or so, and perhaps a mid-morning nap to ease the stress of that 9am meeting. There would be interaction in the form of gossiping and generally avoiding work. And home-time would be a little earlier than the 6pm norm.

Progressively, over the week, this intermediate stage between holiday and work could get more work-like, and after a week you would be as ready as you'll ever be for a full day's graft. Who's with me?