Our weekends used to cost more than our weekdays. I started keeping a short list of things that need no booking and no money, helped along by this family magazine and by the corners of our own town that I'd stopped noticing.

The picnic came first. Not our local park, which they know down to the broken swing, but one a couple of bus stops away that we'd never set foot in. Same sandwiches, different grass. They talked about that park for a month. We go back there now, which was never the plan.

The den was a rainy Saturday. Every blanket in the house, two chairs, a clothes horse and a long negotiation about the roof. I didn't help much. I mostly held things while being told the wall was wrong. It fell down twice and was rebuilt both times.

Library mornings are quiet and free, and the children treat choosing books as serious work. We take a bag, stay for the story session if there is one, then walk home the long way. The bike ride usually ends at a bench with a flask and something from the tin. That stop is the point, not the cycling.

Cooking together is the last one. Something simple, scones or flatbread or a bowl of dough that gets kneaded to death. It makes a mess, takes twice as long, and they eat what they made, which almost never happens otherwise. The flour on the floor is part of it.

None of it needs a plan or a booking. It needs someone to say, on Saturday morning, pick one, and then to go along with whatever they choose.