The drive down to Sahurs started well enough, which should have been my first warning. I'd packed the car the night before, smug as you like, even remembered the French breathalysers that nobody actually uses. But somewhere past Rouen, with the sat nav cheerfully announcing we were "arriving at destination" in the middle of a field, I realised I'd copied the postcode down wrong. Not slightly wrong, you understand. Completely, magnificently wrong. We spent forty-five minutes circling what I can only describe as very attractive farmland, me growing increasingly defensive while my partner made that face. You know the one. The "this is fine but also your fault" face.

We found it eventually, tucked down a lane that felt more like a suggestion than actual tarmac. And there it was: a proper Normandy cottage, all timber framing and roses that looked almost too picturesque to be real. I half expected a film crew to emerge from behind the hydrangeas. The key was in the lockbox, the code worked first time (a small mercy), and then we were in.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. Old wood, something faintly apple-y, and that particular damp-stone scent you only get in French country houses. The second thing was the silence. Not creepy silence. The proper, thick, wrapped-in-a-duvet kind. No traffic, no neighbours arguing about bins, just a distant cow doing occasional commentary and what I later learned was a very committed blackbird in the garden.

I dumped the bags with theatrical exhaustion and made straight for the garden. There's a terrace, if you want to be fancy about it, though it's really just a slab of stone with a table that wobbles slightly and chairs that have seen better decades. I sat down with a beer I'd bought at a supermarket somewhere near Dieppe, already warm because I'd forgotten to bring a cool bag, and did absolutely nothing. This was approximately three hours ago, and I'm still here.

The garden's the sort that looks effortless but probably isn't. Wisteria doing its draping thing over the door, herbs in pots that someone else has already planted and watered, a patch of lawn that needs mowing but not urgently. There's a hammock strung between two trees that I eyed suspiciously at first, convinced it would deposit me on the grass, but which I now regard as my spiritual home. I've read perhaps six pages of my book in two days. The same six pages, repeatedly. Something happens in chapter three, I assume. I'll find out eventually.

This morning I made coffee in the kitchen, which has one of those hobs that requires a degree in engineering, and carried it outside in my socks. The dew was still on the grass. The blackbird was doing his set. I stood there with my terrible coffee, feeling smug about absolutely nothing, and thought: this is it, isn't it? This is the whole point. Not the sights, not the ticking off of experiences. Just this. Warm mug, cold feet, nowhere to be.

Tomorrow I might walk to the village, which is apparently somewhere in that direction, or I might not. There's a boulangerie, I've been told. Croissants would be nice. But they would also require putting on proper shoes, and the hammock is calling, and my six pages aren't going to not-read themselves. The wisteria's doing something interesting against the wall. I've been watching it for twenty minutes.

The wrong postcode was the best thing I did all year.