You’re doing something right when the Queen follows you to Norfolk

She’s such a copycat, that Queen Elizabeth. No sooner do I arrive in North Norfolk for a spell of secluded book writing, then she announces she’s abandoning Balmoral, where she’d usually be at this time of year, to come here too. The cheek! Normally, she’d stay in Scotland until October before nipping back south again for a few official duties, and then head to Sandringham in December.

But this year, almost certainly because she heard I was staying in a house just seven miles away, she’s broken tradition and is holidaying in a farmhouse on the Sandringham estate for a couple of weeks instead. I’ve been keeping a sharp eye out on my walks and preparing to fib, if necessary, and say I can’t possibly have dinner because I’m promised elsewhere. So tiresome when you go away but constantly bump into people and it’s all, “Let’s go to the beach club tomorrow, wouldn’t it be great to get the kids together?”.

To be fair, it’s not just the Queen and me up here. It’s the Queen, me and roughly 43 million others. I’m supposed to be working but squeezing in the odd trip to Holkham for a lungful of fresh air, plus a Mr Whippy (I file these excursions under “inspiration”), and the number of people gadding about is extraordinary. When I’m supposed to be alone, meditating on my words,

I seem to forget that I’ve come to one of the most fashionable stretches of the coastline. At least Orwell had the good sense to head for the Hebrides.

It’s like Bethlehem in December up here, not a bed to be had until late October, a local tells me. Every day, a long queue snakes back from the Old Etonian fishmonger in Burnham Market as people wait in line for their lobster and turbot. Notting Hill accents reverberate around the town and there is an extremely high density of Range

LONG REIGN What should Sophia say if Her Majesty asks her to dine?

Rovers, although, fortunately, unlike in Cornwall a few weeks ago, I haven’t driven into any of them yet.

I huff and puff behind the wheel while one of them dawdles in front of me on the road to Walsingham, as if they’re bird spotting while actually driving (the Queen drives a Range Rover, doesn’t she?). The following day, I promise myself that if I hit a certain word count I can go to a shack called The Crab Hut in Brancaster for a lunchtime sandwich. The queue there is 10 people long and, when I finally reach the front, I’m told it’s cash only. Don’t panic, says the nice lady, clearly seeing panic in my eyes, could I perhaps do a bank transfer on my phone? So there I stand, outside this shack as there’s tutting in the queue behind me, frantically tapping digits into my phone as if conducting a drug deal instead of trying to buy a prawn baguette.

It’s all too much, so I’ve retreated, only going out early and walking along the beach at 6.30am before the crowds arrive. Strolling along as the sun rises over the pinewoods and razor shells crackle underfoot sets me up nicely for a day behind my desk alone. No sign, yet, of a small, elderly lady approaching along the spit with a couple of Dorgis tumbling around her legs, but I’ve got my excuse ready just in case.