Whilst I sit here by the pool at our holiday apartment in Ibiza, it occurs to me that although my camera has been pretty much everywhere with me, it’s rarely been out of my shoulder bag.

Something that often happens to me when we travel as a family; we eat too well, drink too much, get sunburnt, lie in in the morning and generally end up more de-stressed than Santa’s elves on Boxing Day. So much so that, sunrises are slept through and sunsets are only visible in the distance through a restaurant window whilst appetisers are being munched through. The rest of the day is Hot with a capital H and the sun so bright that even two pairs of sunglasses aren’t enough to make you stop squinting in the height of the day. Photographically ideal, it is very very far from.

Lounging by the pool - done a lot of that recently

So whilst I beat myself up about not taking any “worthwhile” images, and tell myself that tomorrow will be the day, my tan is coming along nicely, I’ve eaten too much really good food, probably drank my own weight in Mahou and the most exercise I have done is swim around a pedallo in the sea a couple of times.

But it gets me to thinking about how fine the line is between living in the moment and trying to capture it. The self-critical dark menacing thundercloud that follows me around everywhere tells me that I’m being lazy and self-indulgent. That I really ought to get off my ass and get something on those memory cards. The little ray of sunshine that occasionally peaks up from behind the broody storming monster, yawns “Chill out. You’re on your holidays” and that I should sit back and enjoy these two weeks of bliss; we are all incredibly relaxed, barely a crossed word has been heard and the only real concern is in which fantastic beach bar shall we eat our next divine Ibizan feast. So I think I’ll crack open another Mahou and worry about that next photograph tomorrow.

Chances are that several times between now and then, my iPhone will have appeared from my pocket and I’ll have snapped a whole bunch more “snapshots” of the wife and kids to go through and relive the moments.

The seducing power of should