Maddocks scurries around shifting glossy piles of this month’s key non-fiction hardbacks written by close friends of the Cobbs to make room for the platters, which are placed on a large footstool in front of the fire, within easy reaching distance, just how I like it.

A deep sense of well-being and comfort is stealing over me, and I try not to think about the fact that we still haven’t ‘done anything’ to Home Farm.

Ralph immediately rushes over to inspect the fire and bends over the log basket. He picks up a section of ash, sniffs it and sighs with self-pity. He still hasn’t recovered from the blow of discovering, when he took his log-shifter on wheels out to the woodshed, that Colin Watts, the log-man (and possibly the rumoured village rapist, according to Rose, which slightly puts paid to my plans for him and Ana) had come while we were out.

Watts had filled the barn to the rafters with soaking-wet new pine, full of water and sap. Ralph tried burning some on the fire in the sitting room but even the drier ones just sat there, mutinously hissing and steaming. Furious, he had called Watts on his mobile.

‘I know perfectly well how to make a fire, thank you, otherwise we would have frozen to death this winter, as we don’t have central heating,’ I heard him saying. ‘My question is, what possessed you to sell us two loads of new wet wood when you could have sold us two loads of dry, seasoned wood?’

Pause.

‘No, Colin, it DOES NOT burn if you lay the fire properly, as you suggest. I would go so far as to say that you have sold us two loads of flame-retardant logs. Your logs are so completely fire-resistant I’m surprised they haven’t tried to make cheap soft furnishings and children’s nightclothes out of them.’

Pause.

‘Colin, let me say this. There’s something nasty in the woodshed and do you know what? I know exactly what it is. It’s YOUR WOOD! Do you understand? So unless you bring us some nice dry wood, and take away the nasty wet, I will have no choice but to turn elsewhere for my…’ But then he stopped.

Longer pause.

He couldn’t threaten Watts, or cancel the cheque – this is Honeyborne, not Highbury and Islington – because if he did, sure as eggs, Ralph would find himself seated next to Colin at the Harvest Supper. In the end, Ralph ended up buying a whole lot more dry wood and agreed to keep all the wet wood as well, which was a result. For Colin Watts.