For our fifth wedding anniversary last weekend we celebrated in style.

We stayed in a luxury room in a quaint old Sussex inn and ate out under the stars on the terrace of the pub's gourmet restaurant.

It was a stunning, romantic night, marred only by a short list of things.

The first was that I had an appalling headache that no amount of fine wine could dull and my throat was so sore the roasted tomato and fresh anchovy salad I chose as a starter went down as easily as a plate of rusty razor blades.

As happens in these circumstances, my ailing health caused me to be ratty with my dearly beloved husband over the most trivial matters - none of which I can now recall.

He, in turn, used his blotting-out strategy, which involves working his way through a variety of different liquors.

By 10pm I had become feverish and knew that I had to prostrate myself on our splendid four-poster.

"I'm going to bed," I croaked.

"So early?" said my husband, who seemed to have forgiven me and who clearly wanted to sway around to the mellow jazz duo who were playing in the bar.

As I stood up to head for the stairs, I realised that red lights were flashing on our baby monitor. It meant that our three-year-old Eve had woken up in our room.

I made my way as fast as my jelly legs would carry me and found her huddled up on the camp bed the pub had provided for her, totally disorientated.

"I need to sleep with you, mummy," she said, grabbing my neck and wrapping her arms and legs around me. I staggered over to the larger bed and somehow disentangled Eve from my clothing.

When my husband came up a few minutes later, he found us both stretched across the bed, snoring (or so he says). His only option then was to sleep on the camp bed.

Two hours later I woke up to find myself clinging on to the edge of the mattress while Eve had spread herself widthways across it. I then realised that my husband was pacing around the room sneezing and wheezing.

"I can't breath," he panted. "The bedding has set me off. I was thinking of driving back to Brighton to get my inhaler but I think I'm over the limit. How do you feel?"

"Urrggggh," I think I replied.

At that point, we should really have transferred Eve to the camp bed and got my husband to lie down on the cotton sheets of the four-poster to recover but I must have lost consciousness again.

The rest of the night passed fitfully until 6.30am when Eve woke up bright and excited about being somewhere different.

By then, my husband was sleeping on the floor covered in towels, while I had a stiff neck to add to my ailments.

"Let's let daddy have a lie down in the big bed," I said to Eve as we gently roused her father and led him to the four-poster. I then took Eve into the luxury bathroom where we tried making soap sculptures and toothpaste pictures for the next hour.

Not surprisingly, we were the first to appear at breakfast.

"Morning, morning," said the pub's owner cheerfully. "Sleep well?"

"Yes," all three of us chorused, although only one of us was telling the truth.