‘Yes, that’s the effect I’ve been striving for,’ said Mum.

‘And where are the pictures? Let us delay no further, I am athirst, I am agog!’ He had just about the poshest voice I’d ever heard.

Mum led him through the kitchen and down the garden to the shed at the end. We all trooped after them, to hear what he was going to say. Well, in my case, I knew, but I still trooped along to actually hear him say it.

He walked along the line of paintings, giving little groans and gasps of pleasure and appreciation. He stopped in front of a still life of a loaf of bread on a breadboard with a dish of butter next to it and some crumbs. ‘Remarkable!’ he murmured. He moved on to a picture of a blackbird on a lawn casting a long shadow that made it look like it was on stilts. ‘Wonderful!’ Next, he feasted his eyes on a portrait of Ben, which did look like him, but also like a kind of evil goblin. ‘Stupendous!’

I should say here that I really don’t know much about art, and to be honest I don’t know how good my mum’s stuff is. But the paintings were all done in nice bright colours and looked more or less like what they were supposed to look like. They looked OK to me. I don’t know about ‘stupendous’, but I’ve seen worse stuff in galleries, you know?

‘Contemporary British art is moribund,’ Bernard announced. ‘Twitching in its death throes! These wonderful paintings will sweep all that arid, self-indulgent, conceptual nonsense aside. It will be a new dawn for British art – a revolution!’

‘Oh, well, you know, that’s very nice of you,’ Mum said, all grinning and blushing.

‘So you think there’s enough here for an exhibition?’ my dad said.

‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Certainement! I have arranged for a major exhibition at Tate Modern – and I can assure you it will make everything else there look suddenly very old-fashioned indeed! Now, I am sure that all these pictures will sell, and will fetch very high prices indeed. I am not a rich man – but could I perhaps be permitted the liberty of putting in a bid for one of these wonderful paintings before the exhibition? Otherwise, I fear I shall be swept aside in the rush!’

‘Take your pick!’ said my mum.

‘An impossible decision . . . For the first time in my life I truly understand the full force of the expression “spoilt for choice” . . . But on the whole, all things considered, I think . . . this one!’ He pointed to the one of the bird with the long-legged shadow. ‘How much, dear lady?’

Mum and Dad looked at each other. ‘What do you think?’ said my dad.

‘Er, fifty pounds?’ suggested my mum.

‘Nonsense!’ said Bernard. ‘A trifling, piffling sum!’

‘Well, I don’t know then,’ my mum said. ‘What about a hundred?’