I'm writing this a day later than usual, having been there and back and quite a bit around - Spain, I mean. Holidays are hell, meaning that they're fine while you're there but not so jolly when you get back and have to hit the ground running. In the good old days, all you'd have would be a couple of dozen letters and assorted messages, assuming your secretary hadn't exercised good judgement and consigned them to the bin.

Now, you've got a few hundred e-mails per day to deal with, including polite reminders from people who would have received your "out of office" message and not bothered to take note of the date on which you promised you're be back.

And then you've got messages on Facebook, Twitter and various other variations on a theme.

The alternative, of course, is to leave your mobile tuned in and to go online every so often, diminishing the mountain that you're going to have to negotiate when you get back. The downside of that, of course, is that the whole point of taking a holiday is sort of lost, especially if your partner-on-the-road is raising her eyes heavenwards while you engage in discourse more serious than booking your next meal or bed for the night.

I quite enjoyed myself, thank you for asking, which you didn't. What I particularly enjoyed was the driving, in the order of a couple of grand and a half of clicks around the east by south corner of Spain, which is quite a superb part of the world. Andorra was also favoured with a quick visit and I'm glad I went: now I won't have to go again. Obeisance to the god of retail therapy is all very well but there are limits.

You get plenty of time to reflect on the meaning of life, the universe and everything (42) while tooling along the highway, at the sensible speed of 120km/h. One of the things you reflect on, for instance, is the fact that this speed has not led to general mayhem all over the shop and nor were there serried ranks of pedestrians, mown down in their prime.

Is anyone listening over there at the ADT?

I'm about to get a tad more philosophical than usual, so those of a nervous disposition might want to check out some other pages. It occurred to me, while zooming past the various places past which we zoomed, that the trials and tribulations of daily life seemed to be many, many, many miles away.

The rabid racists, the nagging nimbies, the pouting politicians - all these blights on my normal existence back home were nowhere to be seen. I don't mean that the FAA wasn't to be seen demonstrating against the bizarre glass and steel and marble structure in front of the Zaragoza Cathedral or that Norman Lowell was conspicuous by the absence of his rants against the thousands of immigrants Spain has to receive.

No, what I mean is that their local equivalents weren't to be seen, probably because I was in holiday mode, zipping past, blithely oblivious to the fact that, presumably, the issues that so exercise people here did the same to people there.

In fact, from the little I managed to glean from the papers littering the many bars at which cerveza and tapas were hoovered up, and hang the diet (I'll suffer for it), they have the same sort of arguments being flogged to death over there. It's just that I was just passing through, enclosed in a touristic bubble, insulated from real life.

What's your point, I imagine you're asking, with more or less politeness depending on whether you believe in being more or less polite.

Well, to be totally honest, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's that we shouldn't, really, take life so seriously all the time. Isn't it enough that we have to struggle along, keeping the inner and outer men sufficiently nourished, clothed and sheltered? Do we have to worry so much about everything else all the time as well?

I'm sure I'll be back to my normal annoying self soon.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs