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The fambly seems to be developing the habit of appearing disinclined to leave the cottage with any sort of haste over breakfast only to all suddenly be sitting out in the car waiting for me the moment I get round to brushing my teeth. The upshot of this is that I tend to be the last person to leave and therefore have to check that all the windows are shut and that the lock has clicked home properly on the door as well as ensuring that I have all my necessary camerabits and that I've replaced the battery after recharging and that the microtripod is in the side pocket and that my epipen is in the front pocket and that my wallet is in my shorts and so on. I occasionally exhibit did-I-lock-it? door-paranoia at home and pop back to test the door after getting to the bottom of the stairwell but at home there is the added safety of two layers of lock. The single latch on the door of the cottage doesn't have the added yes-you-did-lock-it feeling achieved by the action of turning the key firmly clockwise. It's worse at home when I'm the last person put of the flat, especially when going away for more than a couple of hours and it is not unknown for me to deliberately arrange the movement of baggage to ensure that Nicky is the one to lock up. Anyway, tomorrow I shall arrange things to that I am not the last to leave so that no feeling of did-the-door-shut-properly strikes me during quiet intervals throughout the day even though everything of mine worth stealing is in a bag hanging from my shoulder.

Although the infocodgers in the National Trust entity visited today were mostly quiet and didn't speak unless questioned directly they have devised a new method of annoying me the moment I stepped in. I am familiar with the practise of asking people wearing huge rucksacks to carry them by hand at the side to avoid knocking breakables from their perches. I am always extremely bag-conscious and seldom brush anything even lightly but do not mind being asked to wear it at my hip rather than at the buttocks if requested even though it makes no sense. What I objected to mildly today was being asked to hand my bag in to the desk-tickety-people as "big bags scrape the paint off the walls". Perhaps big bags do when wielded by the unco-ordinated and incompetent but I take pains to ensure that even when barged into by a bumbling oaf-codger that I do not damage nor indeed make contact with any portion of the fabric of whichever shop, museum or other enclosed space in which I am at the time. I was hoping to be able to display my affrontery by removing everything of value from the bag and placing it all in my pockets but they fortunately had a limited number of lockers available in which a bag could be safely placed. Not so for the ten unfortunate people whose bags were sitting on a windowsill when I returned to reclaim mine.

The place itself was the usual posh-house: nice gardens, excellent woodlands with proper broad-leavèd trees and proper squirrels but shame about the stuffy interior and evident aristocratickier-than-thou exhibitions including a wallful of invitations from various royals requesting or demanding the attendance of the house's various inhabitants to various posh-arse functions over the years. Equally irritiating is the sheer fascination which most of the visitors exhibit upon espying such articles; delighted crowing, creaking and screeching greets each new discovery. At least this place had some photographs as well as dull painted portraits although they were labelled in the same incomprehensible way - unless you take the time to learn the family tree first you end up having absolutely no idea about which person is the nth Lord Invalmintrope-Throllocks simple because their names are all drawn from a selection of only three or four over twenty generations. It's all very well having a traditional family first name but when it's the same family name as half the aristocracy it becomes fairly pointless.