Why work from home when you can work from paradise?

If I lift my eyes from my laptop, I can stare across my hotel’s rooftop infinity pool to the soft tropical blues of the Laccadive Sea. In a minute I might order another one of those excellent Sri Lankan crab curries. And another chilled Lion lager. Meanwhile the weather app on my phone tells me that London is shivering in a succession of bitter storms as the government ‘ends all Covid restrictions’, meaning everyone can go back to catching trains in the freezing fog.

I make no apologies for sounding smug, Being a freelance writer (or self-employed/freelance anything) has many serious downsides — no sick pay, no holiday pay, no pension, no Christmas office party, plus the queasy horror of the January tax bill — but there are two things which have always combined, for me, to make it highly tolerable. These are the lack of that commute and the freedom to work anywhere in the world.

The first is no small thing.