Such was the urgency when I woke that I immediately reached for the pen and paper on the bedside table. It was imperative that I capture my funny dream before it had a chance to escape into the night.

It was hunger that woke me the second time. I quietly padded downstairs to the big kitchen, drawn by the smell of freshly baked bread. I found two large hot white rolls on the table, and – luckily – I also noticed that we had forgotten to turn off two pans of stock before going to bed. Soon after I settled down for my midnight feast, I was joined by our university friend GW. By the time TPR appeared – complaining at the disturbance – barely a crumb was left on our plates.

The next time I woke it was in a panic. There was a gun in the bed! TPR was so sound asleep that I struggled to rouse him. Five shots rang out and all I could think was how relieved I was that there was nobody else in the house.

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I recognised the couple from earlier in the day. They were also tourists, and had been browsing the same antique shops as us. It seemed a little forward of them to now take seats at our outside bar table, especially when there was plenty of space elsewhere. However, neither I nor TPR (now French) exhibited any signs of surprise. I started to pay more attention to the couple when the husband painted two saucer-sized areas on the rough wooden table. I guessed correctly that he was marking out areas for playing some sort of game. Once the paint was dry, the pair of them took out pencils and covered the painted areas with columns of figures. I couldn’t work out the rules of the game, but it looked like a hybrid of noughts and crosses and sudoku. Just as I was about to ask how to play, TPR declared that he’d made his last Scrabble move, and he’d won with a score of 702. He must have been cheating: I was yet to lay a single tile on our board.