Summer time and the living is easy...

... but not if you're an academic, says Anna Fazackerley, who finds quite a few on a busman's holiday, hunched over a PC or working hard in the lab.

For James Tooley, professor of education at Newcastle University, August means silent corridors, seven-days-a-week working and fulfilment of one of the most blisteringly emotional of academic needs - a space in the car park.

"This place is empty. I don't know what other people are doing, but I can't think of anything more boring than sitting on a beach in my bikini," he says.

Professor Tooley, who travels all over the world as part of his job, is staying firmly put in Newcastle over the summer to finish his second book of the year.

But he is far from bitter about being chained to his desk. "I am not a workaholic," he protests. "That is the wrong word. I love writing, and I love research, and I don't want to do anything else."

He adds: "It is a tremendous privilege to be an academic. You meet exciting people and do work that really interests you. I can't stand all the moaning about how bad academia is."

Although many telephones are ringing in empty offices across UK institutions this week, Professor Tooley is not alone in being unable to tear himself away from his computer.

Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, is flying off, as he does every August, to snatch some time at his French retreat.

The food and the weather may be better in La Garde de Frenet, in the south of France, but he is unlikely to forget academia completely.

"It is a little pocket of Francophilic academics," admits Professor Blakemore, who was based at Oxford University before joining the MRC. "In its description of our beautiful little village, one of the guidebooks points out that it has a reputation for being full of Oxford academics."

Even if he doesn't bump into his Oxford neighbours while he is out buying croissants for breakfast, Professor Blakemore's refuge may be short-lived.

His research council is awaiting the results of Sir David Cooksey's consultation on the proposed merger of its budget with the notoriously complex research budget of the Department of Health.

"I will certainly be working. I have high-speed internet and a fax machine out there," he says. "And I am fully expecting to fly back for meetings with Sir David."

Yet others would relish the chance to take their laptop overseas.

Lisa Goodwin (not her real name) is six months away from finishing her PhD, and is struggling to pay her rent and living expenses. She is earning cash by showing people around houses while she writes it up.

"I work in an estate agency every Saturday. I do it to make ends meet. It bothers me that after working for this long and being about to complete my fourth degree I don't have money in the bank and I have to go out and do the kind of job I would have done when I was 15," she says.

Ms Goodwin, who works in the faculty of medicine at a leading research university, explains that the three years of funding for her PhD runs out in September. Unless she wins some more cash, she will be faced with the option of a loan or more shifts in the estate agency to survive.

Like many young researchers she has failed to finish her thesis in three years because much of her time has been diverted elsewhere in a lab that is understaffed.

"I have been working on research projects alongside my PhD. I've done five collaborations. That is part of science and something I enjoy doing, but it means I haven't devoted three years solely to my PhD," she says.

"I have also spent a lot of time teaching other PhD students, even though I am one myself. The main issue is that there aren't enough decent well-paid postdoc positions, so there often aren't enough experienced people working in labs.

"I am experienced, so it is fine, but it can be like the blind leading the blind," she adds.

But in August she will be saying a firm "no" to everything, including holidays. "I will be finishing experiments and writing, every day and in the evenings," she says. "I don't mind, because that is what a PhD is about. You don't get it from nine-to-five effort."

anna.fazackerley@thes.co.uk