I have moved into a house in Ireland I viewed once, then bought

With families chatting in the seats around me, a young girl knitting across the aisle, I gripped the arm rests.

I’m not a good sailor, so as I stared out at a flat calm sea, I went through a version of the same ritual I do when I’m on a plane: I figured that if I never took my eyes off what was beneath me and ahead of me, that would make it safe.

I texted the builder boyfriend, a keen yachtsman, to say I did not understand how anyone could go on a cruise. All that sea for miles. What was there to look at?

To my utter astonishment, a circle appeared in the water just beneath my window and a head popped out. Somehow, I was seeing a dolphin by accident. The creature performed a joyful turn in the air and disappeared under the water. I sat back and decided everything was going to be all right.

The sun began setting as Ireland appeared on the horizon and the family sitting nearest to me became restive when the steward instructed foot passengers to wait. The little boy and his sister began jostling over a seat, she asking ‘Where am I gonna sit?’ and he, no more than five years old, proclaiming: ‘You can sit on your rrrrrrrr…’ The mother shushed him. I was laughing so much, I forgot to disembark. By the time I realised all the drivers were off, I was running down the ramp to find my Peugeot on its own in the hold.

From the port it was motorway almost all the way down. But in the pitch black the last hour was country lanes to where my new house was looming on a hillside.