Driving down the A303 on Saturday, en route to visit family in Devon, we spotted a sign for The Plough Inn, Longparish. No idea how far it would take us off our route, but prepared to take a diversion around Sheffield if it meant avoiding Little Chef, we headed for it.

What a treat. A perfect chocolate-box village of red brick, thatch-roof cottages, with garlands of roses hanging over beamed doorways and luxurious swathes of cottage flowers tumbling through picket fences onto the verge.

The Plough Inn turned out to be a little gem, where Dog was welcomed with a cuddle and a bowl of water. She made the most of her rare visit to a pub (actually, non-existent visits since the incident when she took exception to a bluebottle and managed in the ensuing mayhem to overturn my drink and the bread roll basket of the next table) and by putting on a suspiciously angelic expression managed to obtain pieces of bread roll and potato wedges*.

We took a stroll around the rest of the village after lunch. It was so picture-postcard perfect that we could have imagined ourselves in a Miss Marple mystery, an impression reinforced by our visit coinciding with a murder mystery event in the village. 'Suspects' in 1940s costume - a landgirl, a Home Guard, a dashing RAF pilot, the pub 'landlord' - strolled around awaiting interrogation. We walked on, enjoying the sunshine, following a little stream that wound its way around the village - crystal-clear sparkling water emerged from a gulley under the road, past a verge where generations of children had, no doubt, played pooh sticks. We paused and admired the scenery, sighing dreamily as we tried to dredge up some poetic and romantic words to summarise how good life was...

... and then Dog chose that moment - that verge - to have an attack of tummy cramps (* nothing to do with the pub food, which was yummy). Naturally, we cleared up after her as best we could. But the inconvenience of not having a power hose and industrial sized drum of disinfectant in my handbag somehow robbed that willow-fringed, sunny verge of its charming bucolic image. We crept back furtively to the car, half-expecting an ARP Warden to pursue us with the words "Put her lights out!".

As we drove off, we resisted - just - the urge to volunteer Dog to be the village murder victim. Much harder was resisting the urge to transform the village name sign with a black marker pen.

Sorry, Pongparish - but we'll be back.