We lived in a tumbledown one-storey cottage. Our next door neighbours were Chinese. The children had been brought up to play quietly, and for this we were eternally grateful.

Not long after TPR fixed the crumbling front step, we were returning home in the car when I noticed a strange creature run across the yard. It looked like a large tabby ferret. We’d stumbled across a new, and previously unrecorded, animal species.