Most of us are leaving cyberspace and heading for the beach, briefly fretting about the dogs, cats and mint plants that we leave behind. Yes, that鈥檚 right, mint plants.

Search terms: Summer + holiday

It鈥檚 August, and 好色先生TV is off on its hols for a week. So, it seems, is the blogging fraternity, most of whom seem to have decamped to real life for a bit.

Those few that remain seem to fall into one of two camps: the ones that moan about not being on holiday, and the others that are worrying because they鈥檙e about to go on holiday.

In the second camp is mintblog. lastminuteliving.com, which contains, as the name suggests, the musings of a man who grows mint. 鈥淚 am going on holiday soon,鈥� he writes, 鈥渁nd have got to thinking about my mint. The responsibility is overwhelming.鈥� His worries are twofold: 鈥淗ow long can plants survive in a bath of water? Can you trust neighbours in London to come in and water your mint when you are away?鈥� Thankfully, help is at hand. Blogger Drew writes: 鈥淚鈥檒l look after them! I can sit them next to my tomato plants. They can talk to each other. They will be part of my daily watering and talking ritual, which is producing astonishing results. DO IT.鈥�

While Mintblog ponders Drew鈥檚 offer, he would do well to be thankful for having a holiday at all. Aya, on my.opera.com, gives a Japanese perspective: 鈥淭he summer holiday in Japan is very short. Usually companies decide the summer holiday is from 13 to 15 August.鈥� It gets worse. 鈥淪o every hotel and resort area is very crowded. The expressway is terrible. We have to prepare a portable toilet and many other things for traffic jams. And when we arrive at the hotel, we are too tired to do anything. So we just take a bath and sleep. And because of the short holiday, we have to go back home soon.鈥�

Deftly switching continents, Uganda does not initially sound much better. Onyamarks.blogspot.com writes: 鈥淚 have thought for a long time that I do not particularly like the month of August. A straw poll among the people around me (all of them hardworking, committed wise ones) revealed similar feelings. In Uganda, August is in the middle of the three sullen months where no public holidays occur.鈥� Ugandans, however, do not sound like the sort of people who would be prepared to wait around for a public holiday, only to spend it in a motorway layby trying to operate a portable toilet. Onyamarks continues: 鈥淲e are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to have new public holidays. Any excuse will do: a past leader鈥檚 death, the death of the leader of a neighbouring country, each of several insignificant elections.鈥�

A recent victory has been the decision to grant a second day of prayer for the country. 鈥淚 hope they will find the wisdom to fit it somewhere in August or September,鈥� Onyamarks concludes. 鈥淭hat will even things out somewhat.鈥�