'Fancy! So what brings you to Britain then if you have cornflakes already?'

 I looked at him to see if the question was serious, then embarked reluctantly and falteringly on a brief resume of my life to that point, but after a moment I realized that the programme had restarted and he wasn't even pretending to listen, so I tailed off, and instead spent the whole of part two absorbing the heat of the colonel's glare.

 When the programme finished, I was about to hoist myself from the chair and bid this happy trio a warm adieu when the door opened and Mrs Smegma came in with a tray of tea things and a plate of biscuits of the sort that I believe are called teatime variety, and everyone stirred friskily to life, rubbing their hands keenly and saying, 'Ooh, lovely.' To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.

 'And how was World of Birds tonight, Colonel?' asked Mrs Smegma as she handed the colonel a cup of tea and a biscuit.

 'Couldn't say,' said the colonel archly. 'The television ' he smacked me in the side of the head with a meaningful look 'was tuned to the other side.' Mrs Smegma gave me a sharp look, too, in sympathy. I think they were sleeping together.

 'World of Birds is the colonel's favourite,' she said to me in a tone that went some distance past hate, and handed me a cup of tea with a hard whitish biscuit.

 I mewed some pitiful apology.

 'It was puffins tonight,' blurted the redfaced fellow, looking very pleased with himself.

 Mrs Smegma stared at him for a moment as if surprised to find that he had the power of speech. 'Puffins!' she said and gave me a still more withering expression that asked how anyone could be so lacking in fundamental human decency. 'The colonel adores puffins. Don't you, Arthur?' She was definitely sleeping with him.