1. The entire household, including the one that always gets up at 7 every single morning, sleeps past ten. And at night, when you ask "Shall we watch one more episode of QI before bed?" there's a resounding YES from everyone even though it's well past bedtime o'clock.
2. You forget, completely, how to manage emails. You forget to constantly check them, you forget to reply to them, you forget to file them. You forget why you normally treat them with such importance. Which is wonderful (but fades fairly quickly upon re-entry, unfortunately).
3. Similarly, your usual obsessive checking of Instagram drops to four times daily, rather than four times hourly. (On reflection this one probably says more about my Instagram addiction than anything else...).
4. It can take you a full hour, sometimes even two, to locate your charger and plug in your phone once the battery dies.
5. Your productivity levels plummet. It seems impossible to fit anything other than a leisurely stroll in-between waking, lunch and dinner. You vaguely remember a time - say, the week before you left for your holiday - when you were the queen of getting things done. Not so much now.
6. You forget how to dress when you're not living out of a suitcase.* Faced with more than five dresses, a pair of shorts and two t-shirts to choose from you are frozen with indecision. And god help you if you've switched seasons.
7. Related - you don't get quite as excited about clean underwear as you did when you were travelling.
8. At least three times a day you ask yourself "Am I driving on the right side of the road?". And you have to check all the parked cars (and the oncoming traffic) to get the answer.
9. You become one of those really annoying couples who say things like "The baguettes in Sydney really are terrible, not like the ones we got in that little French village of Seillans - remember?", and "What was the name of that stunning town in Italy where we ate the best meal of our lives?". You work anecdotes from your recent travels into every conversation, without even realising what you're doing. One minute your discussing the new 'security' legislation and the next you're talking about the tour you did of Lisbon...on a Segway.**
10. You spend an entire week sorting mail and cleaning the house (so much dust!) and restocking the cupboards, and the whole time all you can think about are the photos you want to edit and the blog posts you want to write (and read! I've missed you all!).
11. Even though the news tells you the world is going to s**t, everything around you seems relaxed and calm and fun, and kind of new again.
**True story (the Segway tour bit)! It was so much fun!
