I have never been so pleased to see a toilet brush in all my life. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The journey to Allassac had all the usual ingredients of a family holiday kick-off: a 5am alarm, a boot packed so tightly I needed a shoehorn for the last bag of crisps, and three children asking "are we there yet" before we had even cleared the M25. My partner Dave drove the whole way through France while I navigated, which is to say I occasionally woke from my passenger-seat doze to mumble something about roundabouts. We rolled off the ferry at Caen, pointed the car south, and kept going through Normandy and into Limousin as the motorways narrowed to A-roads, then to lanes, then to something that might generously be called a track.

The satnav gave up somewhere outside Brive-la-Gaillarde. "You have arrived," it announced confidently, while we stared at a field of Limousin cattle who looked back with the weary patience of locals who have seen this before. Dave turned left where I said right. I said right where he should have gone straight. We found it eventually, tucked down a lane between oak trees: a solid stone house with a pool glinting in the late afternoon sun and that particular hush of the French countryside that makes you realise how loud your own family is.

The key was in the lockbox, which was simple enough. The door opened with a satisfying creak. We tumbled inside, kids already claiming bedrooms, Dave hunting for the fuse box, me making straight for the loo after four hours of "we'll stop at the next services." That was when I discovered there was no toilet paper. None. Not a square. I had checked the kitchen drawers, the bathroom cupboard, even the understairs storage where holiday homes keep their mysterious spare lightbulbs and half-used mosquito coils. Nothing.

I will spare you the details of my emergency dash to the car for the emergency tissues, the ones I keep for motorway nosebleeds and ice cream disasters. They served their purpose with dignity. Then I found the welcome folder, flipped it open, and there it was: "Toilet paper and cleaning supplies in the utility cupboard." The utility cupboard. Outside, next to the pool pump. Of course. I had walked straight past it with my eyes fixed on that swimming pool, that beautiful blue promise of holiday relaxation.

Standing there in the doorway with my packet of tissues, I had one of those moments. You know the ones. Where you realise you have spent six months planning, budgeting, arguing about whether to book the tunnel or the ferry, and your first act upon arrival is a frantic waddle across a gravel courtyard because you assumed a house would stock the obvious. I used to be organised. I used to make lists with subsections. Three children and a decade of family holidays have beaten that out of me, replaced it with a kind of chaotic optimism that things will probably work out. They usually do. But they rarely work out without some small humiliation first.

Dave found me laughing in the utility cupboard, surrounded by loo rolls and mop buckets. The kids had already changed into swimming costumes despite the evening chill. "Mum, can we go in the pool?" they chorused, feet already wet from dipping toes. I looked at Dave. He looked at me. We had driven eight hours, navigated by cattle, survived the Great Paper Shortage of 2024. "Give us ten minutes," I said, "then we'll all go in together."

The water was freezing, naturally. We shrieked and splashed and the kids showed no signs of getting out. Later we barbecued sausages on the stone terrace, wrapped in towels as the light faded over the oak trees, and I thought: this is it. This is the good bit. Not the planning, not the arriving, but this slightly chaotic, slightly cold, completely imperfect moment when you finally stop moving and just are.

I checked the utility cupboard twice before bed. Old habits, and all that.