Finding the right house is difficult. You have to be very on the ball, extremely assertive, and make sacrifices, because, if it’s any good, you can guarantee several other people will want it too, just as hard as you do. In the case of me and this house, I thought I’d jumped through every hoop possible, acted as quickly as I could under the circumstances, but when I arrived here, in March, I discovered I’d been too late: some bees had secured the tenancy before me. As I unlocked my front door for the first time, I gazed up at the bees, who were congregating in a large group around my bedroom window and talking in low voices. I could see they were quite at home and had already moved all of their stuff in, whereas all I had was an air bed, a kettle and a car full of houseplants and crockery. But the bees and I soon worked it out. Since they are the kind of bees whose primary interest is in masonry, it turns out they only need a couple of feet of wall and the cornice and gutter attached to it and are quite happy to let me use the rest of the building. Occasionally, one will lose his way and end up in the kitchen or living room and get a bit dopey, as so many of us do when trapped indoors for long periods, and I will gently usher him back outside. The bees are very busy in the middle of the day, but tend to go to sleep at night and when it is raining. When the window cleaner arrived the other day, I asked him to omit the bee window from his schedule, as I didn’t want them to get wet. This being the edge of the moor, the bees will already be well accustomed to moisture, but I reckon they wouldn’t welcome any more of it from an unanticipated source.