I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing down a farm track near Beesel convinced I was heading for a canal in Belgium. The sat nav had given up on me around the third roundabout, and my passenger, a lukewarm flask of tea, offered no useful commentary whatsoever. When I finally crunched onto the proper drive of the holiday home, I felt that particular blend of relief and mild humiliation that defines most of my travel experiences.

The house sat there looking terribly patient, as if it had watched many such arrivals. A proper Limburg place, all red brick and sensible Dutch proportions, with a garden that immediately made me conscious of my neglected window boxes back in Sheffield. I stood on the gravel for a moment, stretching out the motorway stiffness and letting the unusual sensation of actual sunshine settle on my face. The kind of sunshine that makes doing anything at all seem faintly ridiculous.

My first job was to locate the outdoor furniture, which turned into something of a treasure hunt involving a shed, a slightly alarming spider, and a folding chair that appeared to have been designed by someone who had only heard chairs described secondhand. Eventually I established myself on the terrace with a book I had been carrying around since March and a cup of that now properly cold tea. I read perhaps three pages before the combination of warmth and birdsong and the distant hum of a neighbour's lawnmower did its seductive work. I woke forty minutes later with a crick in my neck and the certain knowledge that I was exactly where I needed to be.

The garden became my kingdom for those first days. There was a small patch of lawn that caught the morning sun, then a shadier corner by some mature shrubs where I retreated when the heat built. I developed elaborate routines around absolutely nothing: moving my chair six inches to follow the shade, refilling my water glass with the deliberation of a religious ritual, watching a particular bumblebee navigate the flower bed with what I chose to interpret as purposeful determination. The bee had goals. I had none, and this was the entire point.

I did venture out, though never far and never with urgency. Beesel itself offered that particular Dutch village calm where the most pressing activity appeared to be cycling to the baker for bread that tasted of actual effort. I walked along quiet lanes bordered by hedgerows, nodding at fellow pedestrians with the mild complicity of people who had nowhere particular to be. One afternoon I found a bench near some water, read the same paragraph seven times, and considered this an afternoon thoroughly well spent.

There is something gently confrontational about deliberately slowing down. I kept catching myself reaching for my phone to check something, anything, before remembering that the only notifications here were from the weather and my own gradually unknotting shoulders. By the third day I had stopped wearing my watch. By the fourth I could not have told you the date with any confidence. The book remained only slightly more read, but I had become intimately acquainted with the pattern of light moving across the bedroom ceiling each morning.

On my final evening I sat outside until the mosquitoes suggested I reconsider, watching the sky do that slow fade particular to flat landscapes. I thought about the canal I had nearly found in Belgium, the unread chapters, the emails piling up somewhere distant. Then I thought about the bumblebee, the folding chair, the precise quality of afternoon stillness in a garden in Limburg. I had done almost nothing of note. It had been absolutely perfect.