Have you lost your work-life balance?

If so, our columnist has a practical guide to how to rediscover it. Do take note.

The staff of Claridge's star in the BBC's new documentary (BBC)

If you ask me, I’m missing my weekly dates with the televsion show Homeland, mostly because I miss Saul, whom I am in love with, just as I am in love with Thomas Kochs, the general manager from Claridge’s (back row, centre, in the picture) – if forced to choose between them, it would be hard, but I think you know what I’m saying when I say: “Jacoooooooooozi!” – but at least the return of the Danish political drama Borgen to Saturday nights is something to celebrate.

Or is it? Wasn’t the double episode opener just a series of wrecked family relationships caused by women having jobs, the cheeky little monkeys? Honestly, will we never learn? Probably not, so here’s my own particular guide to striking the right work-life balance....

* If you spend holidays searching for a wi-fi connection you may wish to ask yourself: Why didn’t I bloody check before we came? Is it so beyond my wit?

* Social media means everyone is now available 24/7 but it is, in fact, perfectly possible to walk away from Twitter for days at a time and find, on your return, everything is still exactly as it was before. That is, the cool kids still won’t play with you, and all the people who hated you then still hate you now. You’ll have missed nothing.

* Firmly diarise important family events, like the school play, as you wouldn’t want to miss the quality entertainment that is the one child who knows all the words shouting them into the faces of all the others.

* Always draw a line between home and work, although, if you are a prostitute, there can’t be any harm in bringing a little work home during school hours, and it probably makes more economic sense than renting a small bedsit somewhere.

* Encourage your husband to shoulder his burden of household chores or, if he is anything like Birgitte’s husband, Philip, forget all that and just ride him whenever you can. (Call it “me” time.)

* If you feel you are losing your work-life balance, quickly hold on to something to steady yourself. (I once felt my work-life balance going while I was in Sainsbury’s, and hung on to a chiller cabinet until the giddiness had passed. Imagine, though, if I’d been at the wheel of a car? I dread to think.)

* Although you may have to take a sick son into work, beware the Danish coalition politician who tries to cheer him up with the offer of original Donald Duck comics. It could be the first sign of a cerebral embolism.

(All taken from Juggle, Juggle... Oh, Just Muddle Through Like Women Have For Generations, a very tired book about a very tired subject.)