I think it’s very inconsiderate that so many people I know celebrate their birthdays round about now.

Just when my bank balance is flat-lining - with an alarming amount of red pulsing over the screen if I pluck up the courage to go online to check the gravity of the situation - several friends and family members have the temerity to expect a birthday present.

Don’t they know it’s just been Christmas time? I mutter to myself as I scrutinise the pitiful figures and wonder if this month’s paycheque is going to be sufficient to nudge all that gory vermilion back to black.

The fact that it’s also time to dig deep for the tax man only make things worse.

Luckily, when it comes to my husband, one of the prime offenders in terms of selfish birthdates, I’ve discovered that whisking him away to a lovely old town or city for a couple of days is a most acceptable present.

Not only is the sort of gift that keeps on giving - because I get to benefit from my largesse too - but also, at this time of year when the world is bone-numbingly cold and skint, hotels offer some remarkably attractive ‘bargain packages’ to justify the cost of keeping their heating on.

So it was last weekend that we found ourselves hunkered down in front of a roaring log fire in a rather lovely hotel in Rye.

Rye, you might already know, was immortalised as Tilling in E.F. Benson’s glorious Mapp and Lucia novels. Even if you haven’t read the books (and you really should!) you’ll probably know the 1980s television series where the two monstrous women battling for social supremacy in a very small town were played to perfection by Geraldine McEwan (Lucia) and Prunella Scales (Miss Mapp).

The novels were written in the 1930s which made the television version quaintly gorgeous to watch, but even today Rye has the air of somewhere slightly out of time.

It’s not just the cobbled streets, tea shops and jumble of mellow period houses that creates this impression; it’s the fact that the town is blissfully free of the chain stores that blight most high streets. Apart from Boots and several bank branches, nearly every shop in Rye is defiantly independent – from antique emporiums and book shops to wine merchants, delicatessens and clothing boutiques.

It was so refreshing to walk down a shop-lined street that didn’t have a branch of Kath Kidston, for example – even though I would have thought the peculiarly lurid, ersatz nostalgia of all that bunting, floral china and those racks of spotty plastic satchels would have found a natural home here. (Kath seems to be smothering the world in avalanche of wipe-clean kitsch, after all).

Anyway, as I said, Rye seemed to be having none of this. The town has always prided itself on its independent spirit – which is probably why bohemian souls like E.F. Benson, Henry James, Paul Nash and Radclyffe Hall among others chose to live there. And slightly further afield, famous resident include (and have included) Spike Milligan, Paul McCartney, Tom Baker and Vic Reeves.

The Cheeky girls live there now (!) and it’s even said that Bob Marley’s ancestors came from Rye – so, as you can see, for such a small town it’s certainly a magnet for artistic types.

And here I have to admit that the artistic Rye resident who most excited me last week was John Ryan. If you don’t immediately recognise the name you’ll almost certainly recognise the name of his greatest creation Captain Pugwash – and perhaps also some of his other splendid TV characters – Sir Prancelot and Mary, Mungo and Midge?

If you haven’t yet reached, ahem, a certain age, it’s quite possible that all the above will be a complete mystery to you. But if you grew up in the 1960s and 1970 these were all Watch with Mother favourites.

Captain Pugwash was the most cowardly pirate to shiver his timbers on the seven seas, Sir Prancelot was a medieval knight forced to go on crusade in a attempt to evade his bank manager and Mary, Mungo and Midge were, respectively, a girl, a dog and a mouse who lived in a modern tower block.

John Ryan created these lovely characters and he and his family immortalised them in short, often hilarious, gem-like films for the BBC.

(If any of you are base enough to believe those dreadful rumours about the obscene names of Captain Pugwash’s crew – Roger the Cabin Boy being one of the least offensive double entendres – the exhibition included details of the 1991 case Ryan brought and won against The Guardian for spreading this urban myth. He donated all the costs he was awarded to charity).

A long term resident of Rye, Ryan died at the age of 88 in 2009. When we visited last week we were lucky enough to catch a charming exhibition of his work in the town’s small art gallery. Wandering around looking at his beautiful, original drawings and strip cartoons I was carried away on a flood of genuine nostalgia. You could wrap me in 400 metres of Kath Kidston bunting and balance me on a pile of her embroidered, button-encrusted pastel-coloured cushions and I still wouldn’t feel as warm and comfortable as I did wandering around that exhibition.

Even better, the curator, a smart, twinkly-eyed elderly woman, sensed our admiration and started to talk to us. She was John Ryan’s widow and it was touching to see how (justly) proud she was of her husband.

‘Do you remember Mary, Mungo and Midge?’ she asked. I nodded, enthusiastically.

‘Well, our daughter Isabel provided the voice of Mary because all the actresses the BBC suggested were far too plummy and too old to sound like a child. She loved recording the programmes with Richard Baker, who was the narrator. Do you remember him?”

I nodded again, not only did I remember him, but in the distant past I’d interviewed him for this very newspaper. Richard Baker had been a delight to interview. He lived in Radlett – and he might still be there?

Mrs Ryan smiled. ‘Such a very lovely man. When they’d finished the recording one day, Richard asked Isabel if she would like to have a meal in a tower block – just like Mary her character. And he took her to the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower, which she thought was just the bee’s knees. It was a lovely thing to do.”

I left that exhibition feeling all starry-eyed and wistful, not just for my own childhood in front of the telly, but for the sort of people like John Ryan and Richard Baker who provide a thread of warm, comfortable, certainty that takes me all the way back to the England of my past.

You can still glimpse it in places like Rye.