For most of this summer I’m on worliday. This is a new word I have just made up to describe something I’ve been doing for a few years but that now seems in need of a name. Worliday is a bit like holiday and a bit like work. It’s the future for most professional workers, and actually, contrary to what most people would have you believe, worliday is really rather nice.

Here is the sort of thing I did when I was on worliday 10 days ago in north Cornwall. I would wake up, do a few e-mails and then go for a walk by the sea. Later, I might write an article sitting under a window with a view of a stream. After that, I’d go outside to light the coals to barbecue a sausage. Or rather, I’d look at the glowering sky and put the sausages under the grill instead.

Most professional workers have been taking worlidays for some time now. The steady advance of the concept can be traced by the rise and fall of the automatic out-of-office e-mail. Five years ago these were all the rage: if you sent anyone an e-mail in August, you would get an automatic message straight back telling you that the recipient was off on a two-week break. Then, a couple of years later, the response changed: you would still get the automated message but it would be swiftly followed by a proper response tapped into a BlackBerry from a Tuscan poolside.