Matt Heath: Despair not, summer vibe can live on at work

Follow a few simple tips and you can keep a little bit of holiday in your life deep into March. Photo / Greg Bowker

Smart worker mixes a little bit of beach holiday into daily grind.

So everyone is back at work now. It feels like Christmas and the holidays and the beach never happened. It sucks. Worse still, it's a whole year till the next massive break. It's a complete and utter punisher. It cannot stand. We have to fight back.

Obviously you can't just stop working. Your crippling mortgage won't pay itself. The only solution is to bring the holidays to work with you. If you follow these simple tips you can keep a little bit of holiday in your life deep into March.

Dress like you're on vacation. You can't come into work on Monday morning with no shirt on, covered in sand, stinking like fish guts and carrying a can of beer. But even if you wear a suit you can probably get away with a pair of jandals. Also just cause you are back at work doesn't mean you have to start showering again. Instead of your normal wash, try dipping a face cloth in salt water and doing a quick once-over of the key areas. Then cover yourself in sticky 50-plus sunblock and put your clothes on over the top. Being a bit dirty, smelling and salty downstairs is a big part of the holiday feel.

Kiwis spend large amounts of their holidays with their feet up sitting in the sun reading books. You won't get away with that for too long at work. So take a book and a chair into the brightest place in the building. The bathroom. You can spend hours safely tucked away in a cubicle. Feet up on the chair, backside where it should be. Happily reading to your heart's content. If anyone comes looking for you, simply claim an intestinal problem and keep going.

I suggest Hugh Howey's excellent Wool series, Blair Reeves' Hogart the Hedgehog or perhaps a classic like Ian Smith's Just a Drummer in the Band.

Sadly you can't spend your working day in front of the tent or bach playing cricket with the kids. But you can set up wickets in the office or workshop. Rolling the arm over between the desks is a fantastic New Zealand tradition. It relieves the boredom, keeps the holidays alive. And if you use a hard ball it'll have everyone in the office on their toes.

They can take the worker out of the holidays but they can't take the holidays out of the worker.

Blackened sausages are the staple food of the holidaying Kiwi. But how do you replicate that diet in the average New Zealand workplace kitchen? Simple. All you need is your tongs, some bangers and the work toaster. Ram three sausages into each slot with your BBQ tool, turn the dial to dark, push 'em down and watch 'em burn. Let things get super smoky then pull them out with the tongs and slap them on some buttered saucy white bread. Finally hand them out black and delicious to your workmates. It's like being back at the bach.

Obviously drinking before lunchtime is a big part of any proper New Zealand holiday. Hard to pull off in the workplace. Especially if you operate heavy machinery.

So ask yourself 'why do we drink so much on holiday?' Is it for the taste or the buzz? Face facts, it's the buzz. So to get that holiday alcohol vibe without the booze, simply find yourself a vivid or sharpie in the supply cupboard. Take a few good sniffs and you'll feel the holidays come rushing back.

If you can find one of those metallic gold or silver pens you are set for the day.

The holidays were great. Rainy but amazing. Unfortunately they are over and they aren't coming back for a very long time. That's why the smart worker mixes a little bit of that beach into the daily grind.

So wear your Jandals to work, clean yourself with a salty face cloth, camp in the bathroom, shove a banger in the toaster and sniff your way through the start of the year.

They can take the worker out of the holidays but they can't take the holidays out of the worker.