There was no room for a staircase when the house on Holy Island was first built. Portable suction pads were provided to the residents so that they could scale the walls to reach the upper floors.

My elderly mother was expert at internal wall-climbing. She could nimbly place one hand over the other and scamper all the way up to the ceiling. I was absolutely hopeless. I couldn’t even get the first suction pad to stick on the wall at ground level.

I argued with my family that it was high time they did something to save all this hassle. Surely now it was time to put in a modern spiral staircase?