Trying to avoid Brexit Day 2020, to be away from Brexity events, we’ve booked into a Jilly Cooper novel. Picture a decaying stately pile in the back of beyond. It’s shabby posh. We’re greeted by a barrage of Labradors and we drink local gin while the owner samples Sauvignon Blanc and converses with us.

By 8 o’clock the owner / host is so drunk he can’t stand and his teenage girl waiter covers his absence by explaining that he’s having a rest. The chef has taken over hosting.

There are only two tables occupied in the restaurant: ours and a party of four posh visitors who are discussing pheasants. The deaths of, I mean, and they’ve just done a shoot bagging two thousand !!!!! pheasants and partridges. This is accompanied by numerous Labradors scenting the game dishes and swinging their tails round dangerously. They are evidently called for some pheasant because they charge off into the kitchen.

I half expect to see Rupert Campbell Black holding court in the bar afterwards but there is only the owner, snoring, and a sea of replete, comatose Labradors.

On Brexit Day itself, braving the bitter wind to watch seals, we pause at a café. The staff have fashion and haircuts from the 1940s, and there’s Union Flag bunting from the ceiling, pictures of Churchill, Spitfires and Dad’s Army stuff, and Vera Lynn on the wireless. They’re obviously preparing to turn the clocks back. To 1945. When I pay, they count out my change in shillings. A local woman has seen the shape of Britannia in the clouds. A Vision. It’s a Sign.

By now the temperatures are allegedly about 10 °C but with windchill about -25°C. The coast of north Norfolk must be one of the most exposed stretches of shore in the country. If visiting, there are three things you need to know.

• 1. It is compulsory to have at least one dog. A handbag-sized one will do. A tame wolf would be better. Two or three is better still.
• 2. It is compulsory to have a beard, preferably bushy and long enough to keep your neck warm.
• 3. It is compulsory to have binoculars slung handily around your neck.

As there are no pubs which are not permanently closed, being refurbished, shut for winter, closed on Fridays, semi-derelict or just unappetising, we ended up having lunch in the rather nice new Cley visitor centre. From here you can see everything, even a pipit five miles away (using binoculars), without getting cold(er), wet(ter) or…

…Oh!!! Just as we walk in, an elderly woman leaps to her feet, clutching binoculars. “Ay’m just looking to see whether any Marsh Herriers are coming in!!!” she proclaims, stridently, in a stentorian cut-glass voice. This is clearly our holiday of Posh People. It’s quite alarming and we nearly rethink our plans, feeling we’re frauds here, but the thought of a toasted cheese sandwich wins. Seemingly there are no Marsh Herriers, as she sits down and proceeds to attempt to seduce a mild looking, bearded, binoculared man adjacent to her. I assume his dog is in the car.

We’re able to find a seat on the viewing side, where you can eat while looking for Marsh Herriers, ducks, geese, pipits or whatever. My spouse goes to the car and returns with his binoculars. During our toasted sandwiches and before the cake, the elderly birders next to us give a running commentary on what they can see, which is helpful as I didn’t get any twitching genes. My brother got those. Which is how we come to see not one but four Marsh Harriers. Apparently they are a Good Thing.

Having failed to have a coherent conversation with me about birds, the birders strike up a chat with the genuine article on the other side. (Beard, bins and Golden Retriever in the car.) It seemed his dog is called Boris. He called him Boris when he was a puppy after Boris Johnson. This information is delivered with an air of misery and regret. Everyone sinks into a reflective unhappy silence. But this is in Brexit-on-Sea! A flock of plovers lifts the excitement level. Maybe focussing one’s binoculars is the sanest way to manage Brexit Day.

Even the Marsh Harriers have flown. But the zucchini and pistachio cake is still delish.

As we pack the car to leave our hotel, the owner and a herd of barking black Labradors emerge and apologise for being unprofessional. Unprofessional = staggeringly, blindly, incoherently drunk, so that you walk into walls instead of the door and you pour drinks all over the bar instead of into glasses. It’s something to which I can’t say, oh, don’t worry, it’s all right, because it isn’t. Not when you are responsible for guests’ safety. I just thank him for the apology.

We just want to leave them to it. And to leave the creaky “shabby-chic” floorboards, the precarious shower that ran slower than a drizzle, the drawers which had so much dust in them that I’ve had to put my clothes in the wash (the dust didn’t show up by lamp light), the room which wasn’t cleaned while we were out (and so the cups etc weren’t either), the cobwebs, the undusted surfaces, the lights which didn’t work, the Egyptian cotton bedding which was torn, the mattress less supportive than a hamster’s straw. I have to commend the photographer who took the pictures for the website.

The owner gives us a jar of honey. I think that’s meant to be an apology.

I have concluded I’m not cut out to be posh.