TPR choked back tears as he gingerly paddled across our flooded sitting room to inspect close-up the damage to our most precious possession. The threads of the Persian rug had disintegrated under the water. It was now puckered with huge holes. Worse still, whole sections of carpet had floated away across the room in the soft furnishing equivalent of continental drift.

When the front tyre of my Raleigh Palm Beach bicycle (hanging overhead) burst and released a further gush of water, TPR’s anguish turned to anger. How could I have been so negligent to let this happen? Our carpet was no more and the parquet floor ruined. The only way to cover up the damage would be to persuade V to hand over the green Chinese rug recently rescued from a skip.