Two surprises greeted me when I came home. First, my mother had cooked a delicious dinner and already washed up; second, the C-Is had come to stay.

There was a problem, however, with the latter. RC-I brought with him a menagerie of pets. The three tiny Labrador puppies weren’t too much trouble, but the incontinent cat and pooping rabbits created mess everywhere. In addition, the rabbits had taken to nibbling their way through all the soft furnishings in the study.

I rounded up all the animals and handed them back to RC-I in a wicker laundry basket.