Then Ned looks up, and a light of amusement flickers behind his dark eyes. ‘You know, my great-great-grandfather once had a Jack Russell. Called him Mud,’ he says, conversationally. ‘Why? So he could say, to anyone who asked, “His name is Mud.’”

Sir Michael lays a consoling arm on his shoulder. ‘Ned, old cock,’ he says. ‘All families go through bad patches. Just weather the storm. Keep buggering on, eh, old chap.’

Then Granville and Sir Michael exchange a glance. Granville then moves the conversation on to safer, and higher ground. He reinforces what many had said at the meeting, after the plan to convert the post office into a community store had received the unanimous thumbs-up, that is. In fact, at the town hall, the entire village had become wildly over-excited, especially after Cath had fleshed out her plans a little more to make an ‘entrepôt’ for ‘Dorset produce’ and a ‘destination foodstore’, and dollar signs clearly started dancing in front of little old ladies’ eyes. I have to admit, Cath really was magnificent. Of all the stars in the Honeyborne firmament, she is definitely the twinkliest.

‘I’d like the children in the school to eat healthier too,’ she’d announced. ‘I’d like everyone to provide vegetables for school lunches and the collective, I’d like us all to have what in the States were called victory gardens, where folks grew their own food and sent it over for the boys. You’ll all notice the difference,’ she said. ‘At least 85 per cent of an ingredient’s flavour happens before it reaches the kitchen, and I’d love to convert the whole village, if I could, to the joys of seasonality – but I’m happy to start with the children. I’d like to fill their taste-bank memories with freshly picked berries and leaves. From the roadside. From the woods and fields. From your kitchen garden. From Court Place Farm. I’d like to open up everyone,’ Cath looked around the village hall, ‘to all the wonderful flavours of my home.’

Even though Cath sounded like the love-child of a Californian hippie and Jamie Oliver, at the time we all simply lapped it up, especially when she announced her plan to fund an ‘edible school garden’ at Honeyborne First School, on the grounds that if kids had close contact with what they ate they would always choose spinach over junk food. A future filled with slim, nut-brown children scampering around wildflower meadows and foraging for dandelion leaves seemed to loom tantalizingly ahead.

But where Ned came to grief was item two. The windmill. And another item, that wasn’t on the agenda.