My idea of childcare at festivals is to sit at a trestle table with an ale while the kids run around and make up their own games.

Surely, anyway, a working day of eight or nine hours which is not split by a nap is simply too much for a human being to take, day in, day out, and particularly so in hot weather.

Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.

I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.

Computers tend to separate us from each other - Mum's on the laptop, Dad's on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on.

These days we seem more bound to our bosses than ever before. We even identify our own selves with the jobs we do: "What do you do?" is the first question we ask each other at parties, as if a job title could express a fundamental truth about our personality.

Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.