I have never been so relieved to see a wooden deck in my entire life. After six hours of driving from Copenhagen, a wrong turn that took us through what I am fairly certain was someone's farm, and a spirited argument with our sat nav that I absolutely lost, we finally pulled up to our little cottage in Marielyst. The mishap? I had somehow managed to pack three left wellies and not a single right one. My partner found this hilarious. I did not, not until later, anyway.

The cottage sat tucked among pine trees with that particular hush you only get near the Baltic coast. Ours was one of those classic Danish summer places, all pale wood and sensible Danish design, with a garden that looked like someone had spent years getting it just right and then decided to leave it alone to do its own thing. Wildflowers everywhere, a patch of longer grass that swayed in the breeze, and a wooden table that seemed to say, "Sit down, you have absolutely nowhere to be."

I did not sit down immediately, of course. I am terrible at doing nothing. I unpacked with military precision, rearranged kitchen cupboards that did not need rearranging, and suggested we "pop out" for supplies. My partner, already horizontal on the garden lounger with a book, just looked at me. That look. You know the one. The look that says, "You are on holiday, you absolute lemon."

The first morning, I woke to birds I could not identify and the distant sound of the sea. I made coffee in the small kitchen, carried it outside in my mismatched footwear situation, and actually sat still for a full twenty minutes. The garden was doing its slow, green thing. Bees moved between flowers with no particular urgency. A cat from somewhere wandered through, judged us both, and left. I started to understand something I had forgotten, which is that doing very little is not the same as doing nothing at all. It is, in fact, rather a lot of something.

We fell into a rhythm that week that I can only describe as gloriously horizontal. Mornings in the garden with books and terrible Danish pastries that we bought from the little bakery in Marielyst village. The afternoons stretched out like the long grass, full of nothing more demanding than deciding whether to move to the other side of the garden for different shade. I read three books I had been carrying around since March. I cannot tell you what happened in any of them with great confidence, but I remember exactly where I was sitting when I read each one.

The cottage garden became our whole world. We ate every meal outside, fought off the occasional bold wasp, and watched the light change across the wooden decking from morning gold to evening grey. Sometimes I would walk to the end of the garden and back, just to have walked somewhere. The pine trees beyond the fence made a soft shushing sound that I started to need, somehow, the way you need a particular blanket or a familiar voice.

On our fourth day, I realised I had not checked my phone in thirty-six hours. It was in a drawer, actually turned off, and the world had not ended. I felt briefly smug about this, then immediately fell asleep in the garden chair and woke with a crick in my neck that lasted two days. My partner photographed me drooping there, mouth open, book collapsed on my chest. I should have been annoyed. I was not.

The wellies never got sorted. I wore sandals instead, even when the grass was damp, and my feet got cold, and I did not care even slightly. That is the thing about slowing down properly, I think. The small discomforts stop mattering. The things you thought you needed, like proper footwear or a plan for Tuesday, reveal themselves as optional extras.

Our last morning, I sat in that garden with my final cup of terrible instant coffee and watched a spider rebuild its web between two lavender bushes. It took ages. It was completely unnecessary for me to watch. I watched anyway, the whole thing, and felt something in my chest loosen that I had not known was tight.

We packed eventually, because one must. The drive back was quieter, somehow, even with the sat nav working perfectly and both wellies accounted for in their wrong-footed way. I have that photograph of myself asleep in the chair now, printed and pinned above my desk, and I look at it when the emails stack up and the calendar fills, and I remember that garden, and the bees, and the particular sound of pine trees doing absolutely nothing at all.