In The Sunday Times last weekend there was a huge story about how thousands of city families are now decamping to the countryside each summer. There were pictures of smiling mums with lovely teeth, under the wisteria, telling us how their children go on bike rides without being stabbed, and that because Nethercombe End is only 40 miles from the M5, their husbands can get up to the City for important meetings (with their mistresses, but it didn’t say that) in just 16 hours.

Right. Well, since I’m currently at my seaside cottage for the summer, let’s see if it really is possible to combine a family holiday with work. Here we go.

The slate-grey sea trembles under a tempestuous sky. Waves: big green fists smash into the rocks and explode in a shower of crystalline white, whipped by the wind into a swirling ethereal moment when nature’s savagery and power combine in an instant of shrieking glory.

Hang on a minute. I wanted to write this morning about Australia’s immigration policy. But sadly, each time I look out of the window, I’m consumed by the view. This means that every time I try to send an e-mail to the Top Gear edit suite about cuts I need for next week’s film, it always begins: “The seagull’s lonesome cry echoed eerily from the volcanic jaggedry . . . ” and no one in Soho has the first clue what’s got into me.

Anyway. Australia recently announced that all illegal immigrants . . . Oh, God almighty. I’m going to have to break off for a moment. It appears my son has fallen over on the rocks while emptying the lobster pots . . . and yes, there is a great deal of blood spurting from his left leg. I fear he needs to go to hospital.

He does. Back shortly . . . Right. Australia’s federal immigration minister Chris Evans, who is no relation to the biotech Welshman, announced last week that . . . holy Mother of God, I’ve just seen a whale. I’m not kidding. Was it a fin? Or a killer? There it is again. Bloody hell. It’s massive.

I must go on the internet to find out.

And that’s going to take hours because here at the seaside, broadband is not the width of a human hair. It actually is a human hair, which feeds information at 35.7kb per second. In English, that’s 7mph.

Two hours later. It was a minke. Fairly common in these waters, apparently. So anyway. Australia. Oh, hang on. Jane Moore’s leaving. She’s been staying for the past week, which means her column in The Sun will be all full of whales and tempestuous seas as well.

This is the problem with trying to work from a house at the seaside. Because none of your friends has one, they come and stay in yours, which means you can’t do any work in the morning because you stayed up till three and your head hurts, and you can’t work in the afternoon because you’re drunk from lunch.

The coastguard’s here. It seems a cyclist has careered through my field and six of our sheep were so frightened by his wizened face of hate, they jumped off the cliff and into the sea. Three are dead. It’s all hands on deck to rescue the survivors.

Four hours later. God, I hate cyclists.

But where was I? Oh yes. Shafts of sunlight scream out of the leaden sky, piercing the endlessly swirling might of the ocean. No, sorry. What I mean is: for many years Australia has stood alone on the question of immigration, as immune to the body of world opinion as . . . the cheeky stonechat that’s just landed on my gatepost.

Um. I’ve just been for a walk. I would never walk at home, but here it’s different. I can pick samphire to fry up with a bit of butter. It goes well with the lobsters we catch. The powerful flavour helps to mask the taste of the 12-year-old’s arterial leg juice.

The people from the Top Gear office just called to talk about the interview in tonight’s show. They’re uncertain about whether we should go straight from the shot of the horse to the bit where Richard Hammond falls over. I told them I’d seen a minke whale. They weren’t very interested.

What interests me most of all right now, much more than whether Australia really is full or whether there’s a bit of space left over for most of Somalia, is whether to take all the children we have staying to Laser Blast this afternoon or whether we should stay here and play Risk.

Everyone’s falling out over the issue. This is the problem. It’s unfair, really, to drag your children away from their friends every summer, especially if you, like us, won’t let them bring their PlayStations because they should be outside in the fresh air, cutting their legs off.

So we ship their friends over here too. Hundreds of them. This means it’s impossible to concentrate on the plight of Australia’s Vietnamese boat people when there are only six Crunch Corners left and Isobel wants them all. And Arabella doesn’t like anything green. And Tom will eat chips only if they are the shape of a 1973 Ford Mustang. And Dan’s retching because of the samphire. In an office in EC1, none of this ever happens.

You should see the cargo ship that just trundled by – its huge diesel engine drumming the beat of international trade as its bluff prow waged an endless game of shudder-me-rivets with . . .

Sorry. Australia. Immigration. Er . . . I don’t care. I’ll worry about it when I get back to work. Here, by the seaside, I am on holiday, which is not the same thing. I’m therefore off for a beer.

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