I don’t know who looks grumpier, Donald or his dog, Kevin. If it wasn’t for the size difference – Donald being a lumpish middle-aged man, Kevin a lumpish middle-aged staffie – they could swap hats and be done. As it is, they turn into the lane about the same time as me and Stan, so we all walk down together, me making the conversational weather, Donald being grumpy about it. That is, until we get onto his favourite subject: the ongoing dramas he’s been having with his elderly next door neighbour, Jean.

‘You never know what’s coming next with Jean,’ he grumps. ‘First it’s her legs, then it’s her central heating. The other day I got a panicked call. Donald! Donald! Come quickly! It’s horrible. And then the line went dead. So me and Kev went hurrying round there thinking the worst, but what happened was, her cat had brought a rat in. Only the rat wasn’t dead. It was just laying on the floor in the kitchen looking depressed, all of us standing round looking down at it, wondering what to do. Including the cat. Kev didn’t seem overly bothered. So I thought that’s it, I’ll have to kill it. But how? No way was I gonna stamp on it, I mean – urgh. I thought I might use one of the brass bed pans on the wall. But then the rat seemed to wake up. It gave itself a shake and made a dive for the organ.’

‘The organ?’

‘The old pump organ Jean’s got in the living room. It’s a horrible old cottage, Jim. Falling to pieces, you know. Hardly room for her and the cat, let alone an organ. Anyway, I said to Jean, I said well, that’s your rat gone where no one’s getting it. And Jean said well what if I play a B flat? Would that shift it? And I said I don’t know about music, and I’m not sure the rat’d does, either. It’s not as if it was one of them big church organs you play with your elbows and everything comes blasting out the pipes. So I poked around – with a poker, funnily enough – but nothing doing, and in the end I said she’d have to get the specialists in or let the rat come out of their own accord. Maybe the cat could finish it off then.’

‘And did that happen?’

‘Well I don’t know if it was the cat or maybe the rat couldn’t stand the racket. Not the organ, the TV. She has it on so loud I’m surprised the cottage is still standing. But either way she called me to say could I go round and dig a hole because the rat was lying out on the kitchen step and she couldn’t go outside to get to the shops.’

The lane branched off in two directions, so we said goodbye, Donald with the kind of heavy expression you might see on the face of a camel before it set off back across the desert. And when I looked down at Kevin, he was exactly the same.