Back in Wales and we’ll have a peaceful few days before we get stuck into all the chores.

6am on the first morning and all hell breaks out — smoke detectors all over the house are screaming hysterically!

The moment we are both risen and have worked out which way to run — they all stop.

Wild fires have not reached this soggy part the planet, we inspect the alarms — all bleep obediently when we push the little button — one gives a tiny red flicker — we change its battery.

Next night they all go off again at 2am, — I lift my head and groan, Bill goes and switches off the circuit. 5am they really up the angst. Because they can no longer whisper to each other through their wires they are shouting to each other instead — first one bip-bip-bip, then another.

We’ll give them a little rest — there is no way of working out which ones have flat batteries and which do not — we will replace them all, except that some are radio-active, automatons that don’t need batteries at all –fancy that!

Willy Price, local battery mogul feels obliged to give us the official warning, “You know you are much more likely to break your neck replacing these than you are to be incinerated in your own home.”

We know it’s true but we pay the £47 anyway. We replace them all — even the one at the top of the stairwell, from the top of the twelve foot ladder propped on a wooden block and wedged with the atlas that doesn’t show Ukraine. I drop this smoke detector from the top of the ladder and it bounces on the wooden floor below, Bill leaves his post, steadying the ladder, and with unaccustomed expletives gives chase.

It is retrieved, brushed down and replaced with a submissive little bleep. That’ll teach it.

We reconnect the power. That afternoon there are several other little bleeps then all is quiet.

.