Ralph, during all this, will be nodding and assenting, hoping in vain that they might let slip one clue, just one clue that will make the penny drop. They might mention a street, a mutual friend, a company, even a school or a child’s name might help… if not, he is reduced to asking:

‘So, why are you two on the Godminster train, then?’ spoken in a hearty way, as if he is, if only up to a point, interested in the answer.

‘We’re going to The Country!’ the generic couple in their Barbours or tailored tweeds will reply smugly, with a nod towards an Aspinal holdall (his) and Lulu Guinness weekend bag (hers).

‘We’re leaving Blank (fill in name of privately educated, whey-faced London child) and Blank (fill in name of the younger sibling) with Blank (fill in name of nanny whom couple smugly brag has become part of the family) until Sunday night, for our sins – and spending the weekend à deux at Brambletye House! A sort of second honeymoon, eh, Blank!’ (fill in nickname, such as Wiggle, of former Sloane, now Fulham mummy, in chocolate moleskin coat, bought specially for this outing to the wild and woolly environs of a boutique hotel).

Then the husband will turn to Wiggle/Podge/Trinny with a horrible leer, leaving poor Ralph in no doubt that rekindling the flames of passion long extinguished by the harrowing demands of young children is very much ‘on the agenda’ and ‘in the diary’.

When Ralph tells me about these couples, having finally remembered who the pair are, or were, as I stand in the kitchen on the flagstones, by the Aga, in my Hunter wellies and green army jersey with suede patches at elbows and shoulders, making kedgeree, he does so with grim relish.

And we both hoot with scorn at the idea that Brambletye – with its cinemas and playrooms, its heated ozone pools, its highly variegated clientele (oh yes, Brambletye’s owner likes to mix it up a little: he has the Primrose Hill set, the Notting Hill set and the international jetset, all under one roof) and so forth – is The Country, as if it were quite normal to stay in houses with their own pillow menus and water menus and even their own ‘fire’ menus, where guests are encouraged to select their own logs or coal from the house cellars.

Just as we honked with amusement when a Notting Hill friend who had just bought a pile in Oxfordshire as a second home announced he had ‘moved to the country’.

He wrote a long, dewy piece that stretched to 4,000 words, so lyrical it almost brought tears to the eyes, all about wanting to give his children an opportunity to dam streams and follow the hunt and breathe fresh, unpolluted clean air, never letting on to the readers of the Telegraph that he and his wife were spending the inside of the week in their trendy townhouse in WII so that he could continue to run his publishing empire and the children could continue to attend their top London day schools.