I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I managed to leave my phone charger plugged into a service station toilet somewhere near Malmo. There I was, forty minutes down the road, patting my pockets with increasing panic while my wife gave me that particular look she has perfected over fifteen years of marriage. The one that says, "I love you, but honestly, how are you still alive?"

Still, we arrived at the cottage in Hjaernarp in reasonably good spirits, chargerless but otherwise intact. The drive from Angelholm had been pure Skane pleasure: flat fields stretching in every direction, those characteristic red wooden farmhouses dotting the landscape like scattered matchboxes, and the late afternoon sun hanging low and golden. My daughter had fallen asleep with her face pressed against the window, leaving a perfect oval of drool that I decided not to mention until she discovered it herself.

The cottage sat at the end of a gravel track, modest and unassuming, the sort of place that does not photograph well but feels immediately right. I fumbled with the key box for an embarrassingly long time, convinced I was entering the wrong code, before realising I had been holding the instruction sheet upside down. My son, ever helpful, filmed this on his still-charged phone for posterity. I have not yet been shown the footage, which suggests it is being saved for maximum embarrassment at a future family gathering.

Stepping inside, that particular smell hit me: wood, slightly damp wool, and the ghost of a hundred previous holidays. Not unpleasant, exactly, but deeply familiar to anyone who has spent childhood summers in similar places. The living area was simple, functional, with a wood-burning stove that immediately became the focal point of everyone's attention. My wife began organising cushions and investigating the kitchen cupboards with the efficiency of someone who has spent too many holidays in under-equipped rentals. I was dispatched to examine the bedrooms, which turned out to be small but perfectly adequate, with that slight tilt to the floors that older Swedish cottages seem to develop, as if settling comfortably into the earth.

The garden, though. That was where we all ended up, despite the dropping temperature and my protests about not having packed proper jumpers. A modest lawn gave way to trees, and beyond them, nothing but fields and sky. My son attempted football keepy-uppy and immediately lost the ball into a hedge. My daughter, charger forgotten, lay on her back in the grass and announced she could see a rabbit-shaped cloud. I looked, and could not see it, but said I could, which felt like the appropriate parental response.

As evening came, we made the obligatory trip to the nearby supermarket in Angelholm, that particular ritual of holiday self-catering where you buy approximately twice as much food as necessary, including several items you would never consider at home. Lingonberry jam. A peculiar cheese. Something called "falukorv" that we examined with the suspicious curiosity of amateur anthropologists. The woman at the checkout spoke better English than I do, which always produces in me an awkward combination of gratitude and mild shame.

Back at the cottage, we attempted the wood stove with mixed success. There was smoke, some mild bickering, and eventually warmth. We sat around it with our supermarket supplies, tired from travel and the particular exhaustion of arrival, not quite settled but no longer in transit. My daughter had found a pack of cards in a drawer and was attempting to teach us a game whose rules seemed to change according to her advantage.

I sat there, slightly smoky, phone dying, and felt that particular shift that holidays bring. The letting go, however temporary, of the structures that organise ordinary life. Tomorrow there would be the beach at Skalderviken, perhaps, or a wander through Angelholm's modest centre, or simply this garden and the fields beyond. For now, there was this: my family, a fire that finally stayed lit, and the particular peace of having arrived somewhere that asks nothing of you but presence.

The charger, I decided, could wait.