The flat was bursting with visitors, the majority of whom were students with nowhere to stay over Christmas. There were two shy Chinese girls and one Chinese boy, a Korean boy sporting a huge mop of jet black hair, a red-haired American lad, and a French school girl called Chantal. My colleague EH was sleeping on the futon in the study, and B the dog made his bed in the porch (where I feared he was probably too cold).

Overnight they set to and vandalised our property: they painted pictures directly on to the hall walls that I had white-washed the previous day; they signed their names in huge lettering all over the squirrel wallpaper in the sitting room; they wandered all around the house with plates of food, dropping crumbs everywhere; they encouraged B to climb into one of my purple suede boots, where he soon got trapped.

I had to haul TPR out of bed to get him to convey our displeasure at our unappreciative visitors’ behaviour. I couldn’t do this myself because I had lost my voice. TPR dressed in a white shirt with his University of Birmingham tie and jacket to look the part of the disgruntled host.