I AM, it seems, three trees short of an orchard.
You see, a couple of years ago, my mother turned up at the door of Tine Hise II with a couple of apple trees, as mothers do.
I planted them in the back garden, surrounded each with a neat circle of hardwood chips, and settled into a deckchair to w
ait until they were big enough to swing a hammock between.
I am still waiting.
In the meantime, though, we have had the annual benefit of enough apples every autumn to make a very nice crumble. With lemon ice cream, custard and a sprinkling of chocolate, naturally.
Not to mention the pleasure of saying on a fine summer's evening: "I'm just going out for a potter in the orchard, dear, then I'll think I'll give a few of the servants a damned good thrashing to work up an appetite for dinner."
Until Cate points out that we do not, in fact, have servants.
As if that wasn't bad enough, she discovered the other day that we don't even have an orchard, since the technical definition is apparently a minimum of five trees.
Faced with such a disaster, there was only one thing a man could do, and that's open a bottle of wine.
However, since it was only 11 in the morning, I decided to go to the gym instead. Then open a bottle of wine.
In fact, it turned out to be a serendipitous decision, for on emerging from the gym, awash with endorphins, I met my old mate David Malone, now a TV producer in Dublin.
"Here, you've gone and lost my daughter," he said.
"Good grief, I'll have a look down the back of the sofa the moment I go home. What does she look like?" I said.
"No, no, I don't mean that. She enjoyed The Road to Gobblers Knob so much that she decided to go to Mexico with a friend for their gap year.
"It was all going fabulously until a few weeks ago when they were out one night for a meal and she left her handbag behind with her passports in it. She'd got both a British and an Irish one, just for back-up, then carelessly left both in the same bag.
"Anyway, the next day she went to the British Embassy, got a severe ticking off from a clerk, had to wait half the day, and then only got an A4 sheet as an emergency passport entitling her to stay for another month.
"Fearing more of the same, the next day she went to the Irish Embassy, a lovely old house in the suburbs, and knocked nervously on the front door.
"It was opened by the Ambassador himself, who said she was very welcome, brought her in, produced tea and buns, and had a brand new passport for her in an hour.
"'There you go, my dear, that's you sorted,' he said, handing it over. 'Now, if I could just have your contact details in Mexico, that would be great.'
"'Is it for an inquiry into how I lost the passport in the first place?' she said, sure this was all too good to be true.
"'Not at all,' said the Ambassador. 'It's so we can invite you to the St Patrick's Day party'."
Splendid.
