Sunday

We sleep in fairly late and get up to find that breakfast is over - and that plenty of folks are already up at the showfield for the start of the Summer Fayre. After a quick bite of toast we pile into K's mum's car and head up there ourselves. The sun is out already, and after dropping K's entry for the pudding competition off at the appropriate tent, we start helping arrange chairs for the band (The Mangled Wurzels, who are exactly how you'd imagine them to be at at Summer Fayre in Dorset - silly, cider-obsessed and entirely apt). Next we're instructed by K's capable but visibly put-upon father to jump in his hire van and deliver plastic bins to the parts of the showfield that most need them. Not for the first time, it feels a little like playing Theme Park - keeping the guests happy while trying not to run any of them over. I refrain from mentioning this reference to K or her little brother, being too female and too young respectively to really appreciate what I'm on about.

By the time we're done, it's time to get on with enjoying ourselves, which we do buy eating a way-overpriced bacon roll each and meeting up with K's older brother, who has arrived with his wife, son and 6-week old baby daughter, Hattie, who we're meeting for the first time. The three-year-old son, Ollie, is loads of fun - we take him to the bouncy castle and the huge inflatable slide and buy him a pinwheel and all the other stuff you're supposed to do at this sort of thing.

Another obligatory thing to do is test out the local cider - which I do with gusto but within my meagre budget. I don't get drunk, just a little apple-y. By 6pm we're both exhausted and head back to K's parents' house and make plans to head back up to London. The train back is busy but we both get headphones on and books out - but mostly we both feel like sleeping for a year or so.

We get home and I knock together some pasta for dinner, which keeps us awake until 10.30 - and even that is pushing it. A mixture of heat, travel, young children and fresh country air has absolutely wiped us out this weekend, much fun though it has been.