The idea of getting out of town for the weekend is so lovely. The reality of it is so awful. Mostly, it’s the thing where you pick up some bird after work (birds always work these days, it’s a bore) and head off to the M25, hoping, what with the Friday traffic, to be on the motorway proper by 7pm. And then it’s 73 miles to junction 19, turning off at about 8.30 on to the Awhatever, which briefly becomes the Asomethingelse (according to the map), before turning back into the Awhatever, which you rejoin in the wrong direction just after 9 (with the words “kitchen closes at 9.30 sharp, chef is very strict about that” ringing in your ears) so that at 9.23 you are still racing away from your no-doubt grisly supper (and into the dark and the rain and the howling of wolves) in the hope of eventually coming upon a roundabout that will swing you back in the right direction and eventually off on to the B3000008 for 7 winding and badger-strewn miles and a just-before-midnight feast of 4 thin gingery biscuits (2 per cellophane packet) and a slurp each from the mini-carton of UHT milk on the tray next to the plastic kettle.

Still, last weekend I decided it would be nice to welcome spring with a trip to the seaside, so I booked the last available room in Aldeburgh and began dreaming of fresh air, walks on the beach under salmon-skin skies, steaming fish and chips, frothing pints of Adnams and frantic sex in the four-minute window before Match of the Day.

Although, obviously, what always happens is that rain drives like all hell out of the salmon-skin sky and soaks your jeans so it’s sore to walk, and the only beer is Foster’s Ice, and the chips are frozen, and the fish stinks, and you get mugged by the spotty hoodlum who was jamming coppers in the chip shop fruitie and saw the glint of your shiny London coins, and then you get lost on the way home, and you huddle under a dolmen until the rescue helicopter comes, and then your bird goes home with the pilot, and the telly doesn’t get BBC One, and you wonder why in the world you didn’t stay home and roast a chicken and read a nice book.

Except that last weekend it didn’t work out quite like that. I picked up this week’s random flopsy (let’s call her Charmaine) from outside a tube station in Tower Hamlets (I’m not fussy) and, despite all the while chewing gum, smoking long, thin cigarettes and painting her toenails, she managed to map-read us out on to the A12, round Ipswich and to within a sniff of the sea before it was even dark, so that by 8.15 we were, according to the signs, only 6 miles from Aldeburgh (yes, I know Aldeburgh is twee, but twee is better than swingeing unemployment, joyriders, lynch mobs and KFC).

With a punctual arrival now assured, it occurred to me that there would probably be a dress code. I had only what I was travelling in, spare underwear, and some Wellington boots in the back of the car.

I became furious.

“Who on earth takes a jacket with him for the weekend?” I bellowed in the darkness of the car, rather startling Charmaine. “If they cough when we check in and tell me that jeans and trainers are not welcome in the dining room then, I swear, I’m going down for dinner in my pants and wellies.”

Charmaine tittered.

“It’s no tittering matter,” I said. “You don’t know these whey-faced provincial snobs as I do. I told you we should have stayed in London. I bet it rains. I bet the room has a view of the bins. I bet there are golfers.”

But it was fine. As it sometimes is if you just relax. The restaurant in our hotel, the Brudenell, was by no means the sort of place to have a dress code. It was all bright lights and veneered MDF, tubular metal and clackety chairs, in the style of one of those national fish chains like Fish! and Livebait (do they still exist?). And the punters were all terribly smiley and well over 18 stone. Or over 65. Or both. But then this was the seaside.

And the food was good. Seasonal menu of five starters and five mains, the ideal proportions, although I was a bit baffled by “salad of the month” – you’re left thinking that by, ooh, the 27th or 28th, the leaves might be looking a little sad.

But local prawns and crayfish in a straight-up-and-down Marie Rose sauce sat up and begged in a single, tightly curled lettuce leaf that served as a bowl, and the salmon they smoke on site was thinly sliced, nicely presented, and given a bit of added life with a splodge of horseradish cream.

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