It wasn’t yet fully light when I woke up to the sensation of Mark tugging at my sleeve. Christine was beside him, looking like anything but a former golf club employee who’d had less than three hours’ sleep on a shared single bed in a caravan. ‘Dude,’ he said. He was talking like an American now, as well as hanging out with them. ‘We’re going on a dawn mission. You wanna come with?’ Too bleary-eyed to know what I was being asked, but having nothing but an ordinary empty unemployed 1990s day ahead of me, I pulled myself off the ground and followed them through the trees, leaving Fran asleep clutching the ghost of my hair. The car that waited for us on the lane – a light blue Austin Maestro – was unfamiliar but the driver was not. ‘How’s tricks, Paulie, my boy?’ Old Boy asked, placing a book about eighteenth-century Cornish shipwrecks back in the glove compartment as Christine and I got in the back seat. I told him, with total authenticity, that I was feeling pretty great, and the four of us started off for the coast. It was a journey of no more than three quarters of an hour and by the time Old Boy parked up again, beside a gate gap in the hook of a lane overlooking a pitted, zigzagging headland, part of which was home to a moderately venerated and exclusive links golf course, I was still in the dark as to the purpose of the adventure.

‘We use environmentally friendly paint,’ said Mark, heaving a tub out of the boot of the car. ‘It’s made from milk proteins, balsam and citrus. The metal can will be recycled. So this is a protest that doesn’t hurt the earth. And even if we did use normal paint we’d not be doing a fraction of the damage that they’re doing with their pesticides and poisons that they put on the turf every day. It won’t take long. It’s only about twelve minutes to the seventh green if we go over this field and we’ll have the job done in no time. It’s private land to get there, though, so keep an eye over your shoulder, because the farmers around here can be massive bastards. What’s your favourite bit of swearing at the moment?’

‘Pardon?’

‘What’s your favourite bit of swearing, right now? A word or phrase. Anything you like.’

The sky over the water was a friendly dark green and seemed like it was holding everything in a freeze frame for us, all apart from many dozen swifts who spun around us as we walked as if capitalising on this bonus pause before the uglier part of the day legally began.

‘Big badger’s arse!’ I blurted out, before engaging my brain, and instantly felt disappointed in myself, knowing I could have done so much better.