I’d go out to Westbourne Grove, or Kensington Park Road, just to see if there was anything I ‘needed’, i.e. a new pair of Sass and Bide jeans from Coco Ribbon, to showcase my Inner Me, or one of those signature zipped shirt dresses from West Village, in other words, self-indulgent designer pieces I would hide in a bag from Ralph and draw out when the coast was clear. I’d put it on and say, if Mirabel or Ralph narrowly asked, ‘Oh! What? This old thing?’ and give a brittle, tinkling laugh as I looked down in surprise at the garment, as if seeing it anew after a long absence. ‘I’ve had it for ages!’ or even, to puzzle him further, as he hasn’t a clue what it means, ‘It’s vintage!’

Now I only buy the things I really do need. Like kibble for Calypso and yet more firelighters. Which reminds me: I need some baling twine for the gates at Home Farm.

Not that the gates aren’t perfectly good. They are. But I have to get my gates right. For example, if you are a yeoman farmer, or proper local, your gates must be greenish, sick-looking structures, made of warped planks that can only be secured against the steaming ingress of barnyard animals by knotted bright blue twine and rusting, twisty wire. This is to discourage trespassers on your land. Walking across a farmer’s land in the country, unless you are on a footpath or bridlepath, of course, is considered more intrusive than breaking into someone’s house in London and helping yourself to their family heirlooms.

And if you live in the country all the time and want to fit in you have to observe the Ten Rules, which are, I have worked out after exactly one and a half year’s residence, as follows:

The Ten Rules of Country Living

1. Never lock your back or front door in the country. Your house must be open at all times in case someone has fallen from their horse during the chase and needs a large drink, which they will expect to be offered before medical assistance or the use of your telephone.

2. Always buy the vegetables at the village shop, even if this means you will exist on a diet of curly carrots and swedes like cannonballs and your children develop rickets. In fact, you must claim to buy everything at the village shop, including all Christmas presents, even if the choice is restricted to a box of fudge with the picture of the Cobb at Lyme Regis on it and something called Local Honey. Actually, as everyone knows, you only use the shop for papers, milk and emergency supplies of whisky, bread and loo paper, but you must never, ever admit this.

3. You must drink at the village pub and buy the barman a drink, even if the pub changes hands every five minutes and serves horrible, pretentious food at London prices, and even if the barman has never acknowledged your existence and looks like (and probably is) a serial killer and/or sheep-shagger.