The silly season obviously doesn't stop the minute the politicians get back.
Mr Tony Blair by all accounts was a bit grumpy on his return from the second leg of his three-week holiday. Waiting photographers were left in the dark about the time of his arrival at RAF Northolt (a day later than announced), and again at Chequers - where the suddenly camera-shy Prime Minister entered by the back gate.
Some reports yesterday put this uncharacteristic reticence down to Prime Ministerial annoyance with all that hostile coverage of his holiday arrangements.
As well they might. For the furore over his Italian freebie (not to mention his defiance of animal rights campaigners in attending that horse race in Siena) probably amounted to the biggest injury inflicted on Mr Blair during the traditionally dangerous month of August.
It remains one of the great mysteries of our time why New Labour's spin meisters have not decided to defuse this now annual controversy by suggesting that the Blairs would simply be better to pay their own way.
But that apart . . . with Peter Mandelson still languishing on the backbenches, there was no repeat of the earlier unseemly contest between himself and John Prescott over who was in charge in the boss's absence. This time around it was for the Deputy Prime Minister alone to suffer the mocking disbelief attending his pretentions to be running the country in his own inimitable style.
Indeed, it was possible sometimes to think Mr Blair wasn't away at all - his indispensability writ large in a steady stream of pronouncements from abroad on any subject deemed worthy of comment. With William Hague off in America, the Tory Party's continuing irrelevance to the public was underwritten by the coverage generated by Ann Widdecombe's stand-in performance.
Mr Hague's own continuing battle for relevance, meanwhile (to his party and the country), is reflected in the (surely absurd) speculation that Ms Widdecombe is herself a serious contender for the succession.
Yet, from some of the comment of the past few days, one could easily form the impression Mr Blair has returned not a moment too soon to reclaim a government on the ropes.
The crisis in the peace process, it is true, could present the most serious threat yet to the authority and prestige of the New Labour government. And, for all that he will seek to make light of it in public, Mr Blair will have been hurt by Mr Hague's charge of a "betrayal of trust" over his failure to halt prisoner releases.
The great British public might not be over-interested in the detail of Northern politics so beloved by its practitioners. But Mr Blair knows, as well as Mr Hague, the polling data showing that guns and prisoners are issues about which British voters have strong feelings.
The mounting charge of "appeasement" is not one No 10 will want to find headlined in the columns of those papers thought most accurately to reflect the opinion of Mr Blair's middle-English coalition.
But it is possible to imagine Mr Blair turning to some of his other "problems" with relish. How to cut Mr Prescott and his overbloated ministerial empire down to size? What, finally, to do with Mo Mowlam (her sainted image somewhat damaged by the events of the past few weeks)? How, and with whom, to halt Ken Livingstone's march on the mayoralty of London? How to recover from July's messily aborted cabinet reshuffle, and stamp still more of his authority on an administration it is still impossible to imagine without him at its head?
How, above all, to define the battleground for a general election, possibly now only 18 months away, which few seriously doubt will hand Labour a historic second term? Tory chairman Michael Ancram seized on Tuesday's announcement that Mr Blair is ready to concentrate on bread-and-butter issues as a sign of government "panic". And it is the case that Labour has let slip much of the domestic agenda throughout this year. (Unionists might note, by the way, that Mr Blair's fixation with the North in much press comment is lumped together with his earlier preoccupation with Kosovo.)
But the real message of Mr Blair's return is that he has begun the countdown to the next election and that planning for it is now earnestly under way. Moreover, in a measure of the role-reversal signalled by Mr Blair's historic win in 1997, government sources have let it be known Mr Blair wants to make the economy the test of Labour's first term.
This is hardly surprising. The much-predicted recession has failed to materialise. House prices are soaring, as is consumer spending and borrowing. Inflation is under control, unemployment is falling.
To cap it all, the latest figures show Mr Blair's government spending less than any of its Tory predecessors. Panic, Mr Ancram? To be sure. But a lot closer to home than the Tory chairman would have the punters believe.