We may think our hectic lives are just reality but there's nothing real about rushing around.

BACK to the real world. Oh, the misery of coming back from holiday. Last week, we were in Pembrokeshire - God's own patch of west Wales - where the nearest thing we had to a traffic jam was tucking into a high, flower-filled hedgerow to let a rare car pass, on roads so narrow that the cow parsley formed arches and not only grass, but a decent crop of clover and buttercups flourished in the middle.

Not that we used the car much. Holidays are best spent at walking pace.

And maybe the rest of life should be too.

Nearly every week, it seems there's a new report on the increase of stress in our lives. How we're trying to pack too much into the crowded hours. How it's causing depression, misery, illness and the collapse of normal life. How even children have their lives time-tabled, with no time to sit and stare or pick the scabs on their knees.

Then a report this week by the Economic and Social Research Council showed that thirtysomethings - the very generation that was going to have it all - are more likely to be depressed and anxious and to have endured the collapse of a major relationship.

Maybe we should all slow down a bit. The Slow Food Movement has the right idea. To combat the frantic pace of life forced on us by fast food, they champion Slow Food - lovingly produced and prepared, and eaten at leisure, with the opportunity of good conversation afterwards. None of this sandwich at your desk nonsense, or stuffing in a pizza as you walk down the street.

It is a philosophy we should embrace for the rest of life. We are all multi- taskers now. But instead of doing three things badly, maybe we should take the time to do just one thing well. To enjoy what we're doing, to savour the moment, not wish it gone as soon as possible.

That's the essence of holidays, of course, where the greatest decision is whether to have another coffee or glass of wine, or maybe just sit in the sun a little longer. Where we can feel the tension unwinding and life becoming not just more leisurely, but far more pleasurable.

Yes, I know we have to work for our livings, but there must be a better way than the mad dash that so many of us endure. The real world, we call it. But we're wrong. This mad dash is surely not how it's meant to be. Time was never meant to be a luxury. The real world is the world of holidays, where we have time to make the most of every moment, time for each other, time to notice things and time for life's pleasures.

That's the real world and we need to live in it far more. It's much too important just to be left to holidays.

Stuffy? More like sane

HOORAY for the Wimbledon organisers. They have the image of being -how shall we say? - stuffy and old-fashioned. But they have done a remarkable thing.

They refused to show the England Croatia football match on the big screen on Henman Hill on Monday night - even though it might have lost them some of their once-a-year supporters.

Thank goodness there is someone who believes that football is not the most important thing in the universe, and who refuses to disrupt normal life for a football match, even while the rest of the country goes into drunken hysterics.

Stuffy and old-fashioned? Not at all. The Wimbledon organisers might be some of the few sane people left in England.