It's that time of the year that we call 'the silly season', when the only really exciting news comes from the sun-drenched deckchair love-ins in Ibiza rather than the cloudy and cluttered confines of watch manufacturers' workshops.

Consequently, with my boss already on holiday, and my boss's boss absorbed by the vagaries of accounting's bottom line, I took the opportunity to recline in my chair, puff gently on my favourite pipe and let my mind's eye savour the visions, smells and tastes of a recent short trip I made.

Since you're probably just back from your own summer holiday and not really in a working frame of mind yet, I thought you might appreciate getting away from the mundane for a couple of minutes and join me on a brief visit to an amazing, unique and picturesque time warp.

This is how it goes. Imagine a small towering island, attainable only by sea, where there are spectacular views over land and sea and an abundance of locally produced delicacies such as a scrumptious dark yellow butter, homemade bread, fresh fish, lobsters, crabs and lamb. Bicycles, horses and Shanks's pony are the only means of transport along the narrow country lanes and paths that meander around the diamond-shaped island. Tractors are the only officially accepted motorized transport and are used for farm work, transporting visitors from the smallest port in the world to the top of the first hill for the fee of 90 pence and, believe it or not, for towing the island's ambulance. With no hospital on the island one might be permitted to ask to where it is towed?

The island is called Sark and it is one of the four islands that make up the Bailiwick of Guernsey (the others are Guernsey, Alderney and Herm). Although it is less than an hour from so-called modern civilization, Sark is the last feudal state in Europe and in the 17th century lived from privateering or legalized piracy. It is governed by the Seigneur of the Fief of Sark who, since 1565, holds the perpetual lease from the English Crown 'provided that he keeps it inhabited, can produce 40 men with guns to defend the island if called upon to do so and pays the Crown the twentieth part of a knight's fee every year - that is £1.79 today!'

The law of primogeniture and the original division of Sark into 40 family estates still exists, it has its own parliament, its own tiny two-cell prison, has no income tax and there are officially just under 600 inhabitants. There are a few tiny shops and pubs scattered around the island and, given the atrociously bumpy terrain, visits by anything other than a pony and trap are either hard on one's feet or, as I discovered to my dismay when I rented a bicycle, painfully aggressive to one's backside.

I didn't get to meet the Seigneur, but for a piratical fee I did manage to squeeze in a visit to the splendid Seigneurie gardens and see the exterior of his stately abode. Behind the tradesman's entrance at the rear there was an old wine press and, rather surprisingly, a very modern canon, used presumably for either repelling the invading hordes or blasting the careless crows to kingdom come.

Sark exists today in a time warp. Time seems to be of little or no import-ance and it appears to stand still as the locals live an unhurried and unharried existence. The only visible signs that anyone actually has a watch or some timepiece is when bicycle shops, tractors and horses come to life to either meet the latest batch of tourists or shuttle them back to the ferry.

Before leaving this Lilliputian idyll, I sat down at a little outdoor cafe that overlooked both the rural landscape and the clock tower of the Segneurie and I couldn't help reciting out loud the last two lines of Rupert Brooke's poem 'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester':

"Yet stands the Church clock at ten to three?

And is there honey still for tea?"

The waitress who was just arriving with my cup of tea and a plate of freshly baked scones said: “Ooh no, it's later than that dear, and I'm afraid honey's off!”