I lost my good jacket, the one that hides my bum, but then this is the effect great art can have on you

I’ve been on one of those new-fangled “staycations”, a week in an Airbnb bungalow in Cornwall, where the television sat on top of a massive wood veneered electric organ.

When played, this musical beast made such a mournfully nostalgic sound that I was immediately transported back to the 1970’s and instantly forgot about a few missing mod cons. Who needs a dishwasher, when the old man sounds like he’s auditioning for Opportunity Knocks at breakfast time?

This was a week of revelations, apart from realising that bungalows make life a million times easier and that rather than dribbling over grand coastal residences, I should be checking out those little single decker chalet things, preferably with a verandah and a sea view.

Of course the biggest drawback to being in Cornwall is that one is well aware that the locals voted very much to leave the EU and one has to watch one’s mouth in case one accidentally starts a brawl in a public place.

Honestly, sometimes I dream about finding a Leave-voting Welshman and a Leave-voting Cornishman in the same pub and knocking their heads together while screaming, “Have you really no idea where all that funding for clean beaches and decent roads came from? Without the EU, you wouldn’t have any visitors, you numbskulls.”

But, “live and let live,” said the old man, while murdering “Let It Be” on the bungalow organ.

And so we set off on our adventures in Kernow, with the weather weirdly behaving herself, and over the following week I have to admit to experiencing some moments of utter bliss. Moments of bliss are rare these days considering I don’t do drugs and I spend most of my time sneering, scoffing or despairing, so it was nice to feel my heart swell and my eyes fill up with tears of happiness, which, considering I have chronic dry-eye syndrome, is a feat in itself.

So let me tell you what these moments entailed: one involved standing in a field of dahlias, with St Michael’s Mount silhouetted in the distance, oh God, I’m feeling emotional just typing this, I’m talking thousands of dahlias, all different sizes, colours and shapes, from tiny round-headed pom-pom flowers to massive shaggy-headed things. Forget the Chelsea flower show, The National Collection of Dahlias (near Penzance) is free to everyone and there is even a portaloo in the field for those of us who find ourselves overwhelmed with excitement.

The next thing that left me feeling stunned and grateful was sitting in the American artist James Turrell’s extraordinary “skyspace”, perched high up in the Tremenheere sculpture gardens.

Turrell is quite a guy. For over 50 years he’s been playing with our perceptions of light and his skyspaces quite simply force you to sit in an enclosed space and look at what is essentially the ceiling of the world.

Maybe this is what being in church feels like for some people? For me and the old man, on a glorious September day sitting silently in a small oval-shaped dome chamber and looking at a perfect ellipse of Dulux “wing commander” blue sky, occasionally criss-crossed with vapour trails and fast scudding clouds, it was as if every moment of luck and happiness had been bottled in one image.

Turrell has created more than 80 sky chambers around the world and since 1977, he has been working on the ultimate skyspace chamber in an extinct volcano in Arizona, which is as yet not open to the public, however there are four available to view in this country and like Pokemon cards, I would like to collect them all.

Of course, no moment is truly perfect and as we arrived “home” at the bungalow I realised I’d dropped my denim jacket somewhere in the sculpture gardens, the good jacket that hides my bum. Normally I’d have been devastated, but – and this is how profoundly Turrell’s work had affected me – I managed to weigh it up.

Yes, on the one hand I’d lost my jacket, but on the other hand I’d had this fantastic experience that, dare I say it, was better than the jacket. Now bear in mind, this was a really good jacket, it cost £89 – but it didn’t matter, I’d seen the soul of the world.

Of course a couple of hours later I was struggling to retain my sense of “bliss” and was starting to come down into a more familiar state of advanced sulking and blame (why hadn’t Geoff been keeping an eye on my jacket, what was the point in marrying a man who let me lose my outer garments?).

In order to distract myself I switched on the telly, only to witness Boris Johnson behaving like a third rate floundering club comic and then (because what else can you do?) Geoff got on the organ and accompanied the news with a booming funeral dirge whilst I drank a big glass of wine and tried to decide whether to laugh or cry, before going online and ordering a new jacket.