Yesterday, while torrential rain was pouring down, flooding the streets of Ibiza, I had a call from the estate agents who were marketing my cottage in Scotland and I accepted one of the offers for it.

Briar Cottage was where I grew up and spent most of my childhood and it still holds a lot of very special memories for me so I spent years deliberating whether to re-build the place or sell it. In the end, however, I realised that even if I did a lot of work to it, I'd never want to live there again, and with property prices in the UK being sky high right now I decided to put it on the market. Things still of course have to be finalised, so I won't be celebrating until I cash the cheque, but the very, very respectable offer should compensate for selling off my childhood memories.