They worked pretty much non-stop, 364 days a year – just a brief pit-stop for Christmas Day But this is not Rowan’s Ashes, nor the great potato famine. Whenever we try to tell my mother that we led a very deprived childhood, without Mr Kipling cakes, colour television and skiing trips, she says calmly, “You were all very healthy.” And there were outings. Mum took us to London for McDonald’s and museums, dad took us to the races, and granny took us to Brighton for long weekends of doughnuts and penny arcades. What more could any child want?Actually, the child of 2002 would want tickets to Disneyland, Florida, and an upgrade from economy to business class Thank God the three infants in our party can’t talk. In retrospect, there is one distinct advantage to our stay-at-home childhood – the so-called adult Pelling siblings are easily pleased. Well, apart from my youngest sister, Dorcas, but she’s in her twenties and springs from a generation that studied ennui. Even she was pretty ecstatic when my mum’s tiny Peugeot plus pressure cooker drew up in Burnham Market on the north Norfolk coast.

The village is picture-perfect – almost in a spooky, too-good-to-be-true, Midwich Cuckoos sort of a way. All along the greens and high street there’s not one blade of grass unkempt, not one jot of flaking paint. On the face of things, Burnham Market is a haven of old-fashioned family living. But my mother walked to both the nearby Anglican churches on Sunday morning in vain; neither had a single service listed. And nobody in the pub turned and stared at us when we walked in, because all the customers were visitors; and we haven’t seen a single morose teenager kicking their heels on the village green.The Burnhams have paid the price of excessive beauty and proximity to the sea.

New money and second-homers have ironed out the quirks and flaws which bestow the truest charm. But this is a small quibble – and utterly hypocritical. We are part of the tourist rot and enjoying every millisecond, staying in some lucky sod’s gorgeous second home with its large walled garden and obligatory Aga. Invaders such as ourselves, with spendthrift holiday wallets, mean there’s a baker, a butcher, a fishmonger and a wine merchant within a hundred yards of our front-door. There’s also a terrific second-hand bookshop and a first-hand one, compensating for the knick-knack merchants. I lust after Orlando the Marmalade Cat, while my 30-year-old brother, Hereward, drools over a shelf-full of Biggles books.Everything about the week seems designed to make us regress to a pre-teen state. Here we are, holidaying with our mum and letting her buy us boule, a small tent and endless ice-creams.

We play Racing Demon for hours on end, and Hereward has taken to hiding in his babies’ room and muttering “redrum” down the intercom. There may be three infants in our party, but their parents are much bigger kids.The regression continues with our daily trips to Holkham beach, armed with wind-breaks and buckets and spades. There’s mile upon mile of bleached blond sand, framed by dunes and glowering pine forests. The sky here seems bigger than the tame Home Counties one and the wind whips at your bones.