We hardly ever see our neighbours. It’s not because we’re avoiding each other and it’s not that we don’t get on because Lou and Ben are proper friends with Christmas list status.

It’s just down to the weather. There was many a time on a sunny afternoon last year when we would have a chance meeting over the garden fence as they tended their herbaceous borders or many an unexpected knock on the door as they generously dropped round a few plump organic delights from their Chipping Norton allotment.

I’m slightly envious of their knowledge of courgette growing and expertise at producing a verdant yield of runner beans. I just don’t seem to have that talent. We may not have homegrown veg in common but we do have children, both young daughters, several months apart in age.

More common ground is that my husband and Ben both have a penchant for Oxfordshire-brewed ale and when they get together it’s like a mini beer festival in our kitchen.

The bottles of beer are lined up and they carefully choose the ones for review and then go through a carefully honed male process of supping and sipping and swilling before deciding on marks out of ten.

Women don’t do that so much with wine... we just knock it back and refill. So we invited our neighbours round in the week. Before they arrived with their daughter there was a transient period of chaos. My son had taken the dogs, our two jack russells, out for a short walk and he returned exclaiming that Lottie had thrown up in front of Countryfile’s Adam Henson as he popped into a Chipping Norton barbers to get his crowning ginger glory trimmed.

I checked that she hadn’t actually thrown up ON Adam Henson and thankfully she hadn’t. Anyway this is a man who regularly spends days on end knee deep in fragrant slurry. No harm done.

I could hear the patter of our neighbours’ feet as they began the short 20-metre journey to our house.

As they got closer I managed to send some sour cream and chive dip flying from one end of the kitchen to the other and just as they entered the back door Betsy decided to brush her hair with the brush that belongs to the dustpan.

Welcome to mayhem. I’m sure at that moment they wished they had declined our invitation.

It was a similar experience when my son brought his new girlfriend home for the very first time. As we sat around the kitchen table for supper, Betsy managed to swipe a placemat and send a glass of gin and tonic flying, the glass bouncing on the floor sending the contents on to the ceiling and over everyone. Yes, my son’s lovely new girlfriend was WEARING my gin and tonic. Not quite the first impression I had in mind!