Besides this unexpected but pleasing revelation, there were other hidden depths to Josh’s character that took Dan completely by surprise. After his success with the cottage lawn, which he had managed to transform to a deep and healthy shade of green following nightly floodings with buckets of water, Josh had become quite passionate about gardening, so much so that when all was in order, and when work and Maria José allowed, he turned his attentions to the much greater challenge of restoring the Trenchards’ garden to some degree of horticultural sanity. It was because of this and because Dan and Katie had eventually managed to cut a deal with Patrick, being that he could continue going on the early morning jaunts to Mallaig as long as he carried out his office work at home, that the two Porters began to spend most of their weekends at Auchnacerie. It was not long, therefore, before they were considered a welcome extension to the family. Josh took on the role of hero and surrogate elder brother to Max, the two of them heading off up into the hills together on mountain bikes, with the dogs keeping pace, where they would tackle long and, to all accounts, dangerously harebrained journeys of exploration. Dan, meanwhile, found that he could combine his work with Patrick with taking over the weekend cooking duties from Katie, and having become used to the hit-and-miss technique of cooking on a traditional heat-storage stove, he was pleasantly surprised at the way his culinary concoctions were devoured with relish, even by the children. Thereafter, not only was he given the title of resident chef to the “Auchnacerie House Hotel,” he also became known to one and all as “Dan the Man,” thanks to a short and quite erudite poem written by Sooty.

There was a man called Dan

Who sat in a frying pan

It gave him a brown suntan

Poor old Dan

Katie told Dan later that the problems encountered by Sooty over the meter of the last line had resulted in much sighing and pencil chewing at the kitchen table, until quite suddenly, inspiration had struck.

It gave him a brown suntan

Poor old Dan the Man