Since we ran out of storage space in our house, I had taken to secretly commandeering some shelves in Tesco. There I left a dozen Moomin mugs in a raffia basket, and several spare duvets in John Lewis boxes.

On the day that Stephen the store manager found out about my exploits, he told me that he was ‘somewhat sympathetic’. However, he also warned me that I couldn’t do this forever: he needed the shelving to display detergents.

On my way back from the supermarket I found three abandoned items on a wall: (1) a small iron cauldron (not unlike one that I had recently seen on the Antiques roadshow); (2) a mermaid sculpture: and (3) a dolphin doorknocker. I picked them up to carry home and show to my family before we set off for a weekend away at the Balcary Bay hotel.