There's something special about the very last day of work before a holiday. I think it has to do with the fact that when my alarm goes off in the morning, I don't just reach out and shut it up as usual; I reach out and turn it off, not to be re-enabled for weeks. Somehow, that tiny action – involving only about four more button presses than the usual operation – is enough to put me in a holiday mood right from the start of the day, and makes the last day of work feel more like a passing inconvenience than part of a long-term demand on my time.

I suppose that it must be an early-mornings thing. Nice though it would be if all my time were my own, the actual time spent at work isn't actively unpleasant on a continuous basis. The single most intensely nasty part of a working life is getting out of bed at 8am every weekday; so I suppose in that sense this is already holiday, because I've now done that for the last time until 10th October. There are seven hours of actual work left to do, but the worst is already over.