‘On the side please, Giancarlo,’ says Cath, and gestures to the sideboard, where the vast oval dish is placed.

‘Thank you, Granville, I do know that,’ says Ned. As most around the table know – even me – the Clump, official name Pen’s Clump, is this numinous circle of trees on a hilltop. It is said of the Clump that if you run around the circle of trees naked seven times anti-clockwise, the devil appears (i.e. the sort of place that is two a penny in this part of Wessex). ‘Both Pen’s Clump and Hamble Hill have been in my family for four hundred years.’ He glances slyly around to see if anyone is remotely impressed, and is rewarded with a shining gaze from Virginie Lacoste, whose presence confirms that she is, to my only mild surprise, very thick with the Cobbs.

‘And so’s Clench Common,’ adds Lulu, which is annoying, as everyone knows that, apart from the Court Place lands, and the Hutton estate, almost everything around Honeyborne, from Spodden’s Hatch to the surrounding hills, is owned by Ned.

‘But we’re in an AONB!’ exclaims Granville. Then he stops himself, and adds, for the benefit of the two non-locals, Virginie and Mathieu, ‘That’s an area of outstanding natural beauty. And isn’t Hamble Hill a local landmark? Ancient woodland? SSSI? I mean, site of special scientific interest? Surely there’s no way you would swing planning permission? Not there. Not even you, Ned,’ he says, looking at Lulu, as if it is Ned’s possession of a famously beautiful younger second wife, rather than an ancestral seat, that will carry the day for him.

Then Ned, astonishingly, goes on to lecture us – as if no one present has ever even once heard anyone mention climate change – on the importance of renewable energy and the depletion of finite fossil fuels. And how we all have to do our bit. And how he has been deeply influenced by Jesse Marlon’s low-impact lifestyle – fervent glance in Jesse Marlon’s direction – in this decision. And how he wants Godminster Hall to become carbon-neutral within five years.

He also points out that there always used to be a windmill on Hamble Hill, and claims you could see the foundations there still, which is annoying, as it implies he thinks sticking a white whirring triffid the size of Nelson’s Column on a well-loved local landmark was merely a welcome return to the status quo ante.