Ozymandias

There is an old tree in the garden of our summer stuga. It's dripping with yellow-green apples, crisp, sweet and watery, and the grass around it is studded with slightly gnawed fruit. In the mornings, long black slugs eat them, as well as shy deer that curl up under the tree while they're munching. In the warmth of the afternoon, it's ants, crawling around in the ragged brown caves they chomp out of the sides. At all times of day, C eats as much as she can carry, stomping round the garden happily with a bitten apple in each hand. Or she plays football with them. Or throws them around, yelling "Bump!" when they land and bruise.

There is a hammock between this tree and the next, which we break in full view of the owner as she's handing us the keys. Luckily, I've brought my own. And there's a spare in one of the garden sheds. Somehow, they both end up strung up together, not that we use them all that much. But in the evening, as the strings of solar powered chinese lanterns in the boughs light up, they look like the very epitome of a summer holiday.

Which is what we have, the four of us and my parents. There are buckets of crabs to reel in from the sea, clattering brown shells angrily against the red plastic until they get another faceful of leftover barbecue chicken. There are spectacular beaches, still warm after the full summer season, but now nearly empty, where we can sit under the pines or prod beached jellyfish or eat sandy sandwiches. Jetties must be jumped off, crashing into a cool but welcome sea and swimming back through clinging weed and pebbly surf.

We do boat trips to the outer islands, bare brown rock and purple heather, and visit the tiny wooden villages there, all blazingly white in the last summer sun. There are prawns and crayfish and pickled herring, and salt and beer and rhubarb and ginger gin. Late night card games, or playing chess with Dad, or butchering my back by swinging F round in the tame waves of the archipelago, or wandering round the docks of Stenungsund or Henån.

Nice, basically, is what I'm saying. Best holiday in years.

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We're also looking for property, V and I. Some dream fixer-upper cottage near a lake or the sea somewhere, so we do some driving about and looking in the evenings. Most of it is out of our budget, unsurprising on Orust, which is basically an island of what appear to be retired millionaires. The rest are inland farming plots or backwoods hermit shacks.

The most intense of these is something out of a Stephen King book, at the very top of a winding woodland trail before the deep pines get really serious and Gruffalo-ish. Like, a Stephen King Gruffalo, I hasten to add, lest parenthood totally pabulate my frame of reference. Tim Curry in a bad mask, basically.

We arrive just before the estate agent in the late evening, with the sun vanishing behind the tall trees and casting long shadows over a wide strip of meadow. Brambles curl over the edges, and some ramshackle fences hold them back where they get too near the main cabin (dark seventies pine, lowering ceilings, primitive kitchen, sinister cellar) and it's hangers-on (the rotting one with the bathroom in it and the new, floorless one that the previous owner died before completing). The ugliest garden gnome I have ever seen leers from the grass. The fence has an elderly carpet hanging in the gateway in lieu of an actual gate. Everything smells of paint, mildew, petrol and old clothes, like some kind of combination charity shop and garage.

Someone old died alone here, it's being sold to settle his debts. I don't doubt it's a steal for someone (it sells for about 20% off the asking price the following morning, according to the forlorn agent), but not us. We have quite enough shades and haunts of our own without his hanging over the property like woodsmoke.

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My dreams of going back to university are temporarily dust again - despite a place on an audio description course, I can't do the first week of study due to rehearsal schedules. Refreshing Offline with GEST for the Autumn season, and learning a political performance art piece for an Israeli group as part of a local art festival, which makes for a nice break from voicing Volvo web training sessions.

Otherwise, I have to be a My Little Pony.

Over the years, F and C have cast me as Elsa from Frozen, Tinkerbell, Minnie Mouse, Owlette from PJ Masks, the puppeteer for a thousand and one pink, wide-eyed soft toys and a sort of climbing-frame-cum-bouncy-castle. From drama school, I remember the importance of pushing the boundaries of your casting, stretching yourself in the art of transformation. Sometimes, though, you can go too far.

Fluttershy is my own personal bridge at Arnheim, the point at which I looked at my works and despaired. Little beside remains of my pride as it is after the battering of fatherhood. Roleplaying a pastel pegasus who teaches birds choral singing pushed me over the edge. I should rather remain a pair of shattered ankles in the sand than immerse myself further in that role.