With Jasper safely lodged at the Cozy Pets Boutique Hotel again we set off for the far distant north up the A1 (or A1M as it sometimes liked to be known). Dicey getting back on the A1 from some of the service stations, the traffic raced along and there wasn’t much of a run-on.

Nicest part of the journey was cooling milkshakes at a Macdonalds en route before we did some shopping at a Sainsbury’s close to our holiday cottage on Lamesley South Farm. A purpose built modernist outfit unlike the converted barns on many farms. Sophisticated devices like the bin did CE3K style sound and light shows when you pressed the buttons but had to be manually prised open. Virginia was completely defeated by the oven when she tried to prepare our Chinese meal for two Mr Sainsbury had provided. The property owner came round to see how we were, and even he couldn’t get the oven working! He kindly volunteered to prepare the meal for us!

(Against my preconceptions he and his wife were not of Anglo-Saxon stock, they were helpful and genial).

Less genial was the scarcity of blinds and curtains which made me think of Zamyatin’s “We”, and the unheralded viciousness of the sloping walls and ceilings upstairs lying in wait for my head.