When not editing Monocle, stylish globetrotter Tyler Brûlé is back to penning the "Fast Lane" column in the Financial Times weekend edition. In this week's column, Brûlé writes of his self-imposed exile in "pleasure purgatory," an out-of-body, deadline-free state brought on by "sheer exhaustion combined with the countdown to a much-needed holiday" (we hear you, minus the imminent holiday part). And reading of Brûlé's travels—from London to Stockholm to Munich, lubricated by Sancerre and sunny weather—succeeds in approximating the floating effect he describes. After touching down in Stockholm:

...I was speeding through the archipelago in a taxi boat en route to my house. The sky was cloudless, the outside temperature had crept up to 26°C and Bosse, the taxi boat skipper, told me that the Baltic just might be swimmable. Moments later, the island pulled into view and as we pulled up to the jetty I was greeted by an already tanned Mats and our friends Martin and Caroline. Pulling on shorts and a polo shirt I parked myself on a lounger and settled in with Ryszard Kapuscinski's Shah of Shahs.