‘I don’t think so at all,’ I reply. ‘I think you’ll be paying £25 an hour along with all the other suckers in the bed and breakfasts along the Jurassic Coast, and I also think you’ve just been pony-napped in broad daylight. As soon as Gwenda gets her hands on Trumpet, Posy will never see him again. Gwenda is a force of nature. She is not to be underestimated. She gets what she wants, and she wants what she gets.’ What I don’t say to Mimi is that when Gwenda was less scary and more pretty, in her thirties, she went through most of the able-bodied men in the village like a dose of salts. So Gwenda and I have more in common than might at first appear. We have Henry Pike, for a start. And I’ve always wondered about her and Sir Michael…

‘Oh God, I hope you’re wrong,’ Mimi says. ‘Posy adores Trumpet! Oh yes, did you see who was upstairs at Gwenda Towers while I was being pony-napped?’

‘Yes,’ I say. And then, even though I’m not sure the village tom-tom has filled Mimi in yet as to my terrible reputation as scarlet woman, I say, ‘Even though, like most men around here, I only recognized him from the waist down.’

Mimi

Back from the stables. It’s pouring with rain, I’m in the kitchen again and I’ve just noticed that, even though it’s noon, it’s still dark. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen sunlight for days and I’ve got SAD. Now I understand why everyone seems to rush to the pub at lunchtime for a quick one and even Rose starts wondering whether it’s time for the early evening ‘vodcast’ even before PM has finished, as early as around 5.30 p.m. on really dark days… although she claims she holds off till The Archers… and these are, face it, dark days.

What I’ve realized since moving to Dorset is… this, I suppose.

The past isn’t a foreign country. The country is a foreign country. In London, you have much more in common with residents of Manhattan, or LA, or Tokyo, or Hong Kong, than you do with English people who live two miles from a metalled road and kill their own pigs.

A while ago, I was in the car – it was a rare sunny day, so I had my shades on – with all the children and even, I think, Spike, Sophy’s son, from the eco-village, Spodden’s Hatch, on the way to school. I was singing along to Mika on the CD changer, just past the signs that said, ‘Please Drive Carefully through Our Village’ and ‘English Cheddar 2 Miles New Zealand Cheddar 11,680 Miles’ and this woman on horseback overtook me.

She was in Harry Hall jodhpurs with two children behind her, Indian file, in hacking jackets and hard hats, on glossy, high-stepping, chestnut ponies.

I was driving at a crawl through Chesilborne in a muddy Subaru, not hurtling past in a gleaming Land Cruiser, so I thought I was safe from abuse.