We shouldn’t have invited our posh friends round for drinks in our yard when pandemic restrictions were still in force. Ignoring all the rules, they decided to stay overnight inside our flat afterwards.

In the morning I found a bunch of them at the kitchen table with my university pal SL (who was eating a jam topped yoghourt). The couple who had slept in the study admitted to keeping the gas fire alight all night, as well as running the fan and storage heaters from the moment that they climbed into bed until they work in the morning. It was like a furnace in there.

My other concern was a growing collection of front halves of old Volvos littering our yard. I eventually spotted a man with a ginger moustache who was using a green long wheel base Land Rover to tow the half-Volvos to our house for dumping. I took a note of his car registration number and asked one of my former students to accompany me to the police station to report the crime.

The first police officer wanted nothing to do with our case. His excuse was that he was a member of the transport police and was only obliged to deal with crimes committed on trains.

Discouraged, we walked straight out of the police station. On the street we encountered LO, a university friend of mine that I had not set eyes upon for 35 years.