WHAT a difference a day makes, especially if it involves a flight to another country, a swift change into shorts and flip-flops and a drink involving some sort of liquor that would pass for paintstripper back at home.

On a regular weekend, it would take at least three gin and tonics or 90 minutes’ brisk jogging on the gym treadmill to achieve some semblance of calm.

But here, just 10 minutes after you’ve pulled your impossibly-colourful beach towel out of your triple-padlocked suitcase and stowed the passports away in the hotel room safe, you are about as close to achieving Zen as you can get without six months in a Buddhist monastery.

So, what if we spent 50 weeks of the year looking forward to a single fortnight in the sun, when you’re thousands of miles from the office with an inch-thick layer of Factor 20 on all visible surfaces, you know it’s all been worth it.

And how we embrace the new people we discover hidden inside our pasty day-to-day personalities.

Usually sallow-skinned bankers, who – aside for the reindeer tie at Christmas – struggle to work a hint of colour into their wardrobes, find a certain freedom in their holiday get-up of fluorescent Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

In suburban Merseyside, any suggestion of karaoke or audience participation makes them feel slightly sick inside, yet on a sandy beach in Skiathos they do not have to be asked to join the throng of Greek dancers, finding a surprising flexibility in their rarely gyrating hips.

Those of us who use hair straighteners as part of our daily routine either leave them unused in the suitcase or do not take them along at all.

Wavy hair, with perhaps a slightly unruly parting, is the mark of freedom. And, anyway, summer holiday weather has chaotic ideas about styling and sends an extra puff of sea breeze or ray of sun in your direction if you’re looking a bit too sleek.

This must only be the case for tourists as the local people always seem well put together, and not permanently tinged with the sticky scent of suntan lotion and legs shiny from a mosquito repellent glaze.

If we stayed there long enough, would we turn native? Would our hair settle into gentle waves and our skin tone no longer head towards lobster before turning brown or, more likely, straight back to its pre-holiday state.