We had to take a trip back to the UK last month to check out the damage to our house, we had foolishly, stupidly, gullibly rented out for a year. We knew our tenants were nuts but we thought they were nuts in a nice way, as she would phone us every week with news such as “Nathaniel has just heard on the radio that Al Qaeda are invading Birmingham, and we have seen our fighter jets heading south, can you see them out of your window in Portugal?” and “Someone was walking on the roof of the house, we think it might have been the SAS” and “We had an earthquake in Wales yesterday, but don’t worry, the house is all right” and “They’ve just passed a law in the Welsh Assembly which says English people can’t buy a house in Wales”. In the same phone calls she would tell us that “Kevin is a registered Corgi engineer and has serviced your central heating system for you – no charge”, “We’ve had the house insulated for you – no charge”, “we’ve had some new storage heaters fitted for you – no charge”, “we’ve got a kitchen lying around we can fit for you if you like – no charge”. We were a bit concerned by “we’ve painted your study a lovely buttermilk for you – no charge” but we passed it off as being a matter of good taste, as the study was a heavy and old-fashioned shade of blue before.

Recently though we had been receiving increasingly disturbing emails from the neighbours and with each email we were able to start our own painting – as we started to paint a picture of the house being used as some sort of animal shelter/kindergarten/terrorist hide out where all house-mates were equipped with paint brushes, large fully stocked pallets with every colour of the rainbow and sledge hammers. We were not disappointed. It was fine at first glance; we could see through our 200 year old cottage windows a table laden with chocolate fingers and a chocolate fondue set, with a box of non brand chocolates (it should have given the game away really, the un-known brand). There appeared to be a vase of flowers (plastic – the second ‘game up’ sign) and some pot pourri in a dish (I f*cking hate pot pourri and who ever invented wood chippings with dead pine cones dyed orange while all smelling like a toilet wants the stuff ramming down his throat).