The main problem with our kitchen was that it was a five minute drive from the rest of our house. The “room” itself was a low level crumbling shack sitting in an unkempt garden. Nobody had bothered with the housework or weeding since Patsy Stone moved in. Even TPR had given up on mowing the lawn and no longer cared about the domestic scrap heap that appeared to grow bigger and bigger each day in the ditch beside the fence.

The only reason why we hung on to the building was the unusual fireplace in the sitting room. It was rumoured that the moulding that depicted St Cuthbert and Lindisfarne Castle was designed and manufactured by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and was worth an absolute fortune.