Rebecca Tyrrel: Days Like Those

Matthew didn't come with Louis and me, the dogs and Miles the tortoise to spend the fag-end of the Christmas break in our regular, Devonshire rental.

He wasn't even in phone contact, although he undoubtedly would have been if there had been a decent mobile phone signal. He would have been shouting instructions and gloomily repeating his well-worn, unfunny jokes about in-breeding in the remoter parts of the West Country such as: "If you see the shopkeeper in the village, do ask her to send my regards to her father, brother and husband when she sees him this evening."

Matthew is not at his best in the first couple of months of the calendar – he is a stupendously unstoical sufferer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and if he had joined us in what I like to refer to as "my Devon cottage", he would have moaned about the lack of light and the cold and reiterated such well-loved January phrases as "neo-Strindbergian weltschmertz" and "For the last time, woman, where have you put my hemlock?"

Even so, there did come a time during our short stay away from him when I wished he was with us, or at least available on the phone, because there was dramatic news regarding the estate upon which "my Devon cottage" resides. The entire property, with the exception of "my [actual] Devon cottage", has, apparently, been sold. The big house, which is a hotel, has been bought, allegedly, by a sizeable chain and the implications of this transaction, if true, could be disastrous for me. The new owners could decide to restrict our access to the river and various bits of the estate where Louis, the dogs and I, (and possibly Miles the tortoise, although he has yet to wander beyond the kitchen table) love to roam.

And then, the day after hearing this potentially catastrophic news, I emerged from the shower to find myself staring at a middle-aged father of four who had wandered with his offspring on to "my land" in defiance of the "private" signs. He was peering in at me and I didn't hesitate to act. I threw open the window, while at the same time clinging desperately to a towel that could have been larger, and shouted: "What is it exactly about the word 'private' that confused you?"

His feeble excuse was that he was a hotel guest and didn't think that "private" referred to him. He thought he was exempt. Apparently he wasn't the only one. We had more "visitors" as the day wore on and I can only hope the new hotel owners will have done something about it and amended the signage by the end of February when we are next in residence.

If Matthew had been there he would have been furious. On one of the rare occasions, approximately five years ago, when he did pay a visit to our picturesque rural paradise, he was enraged to wake late one morning, throw open the curtains, and find Sir John Nott, defence secretary during the Falklands war, no less, fishing in the pond. Matthew was up and dressed in a matter of minutes and suggesting we re-enact the sinking of the Belgrano using Louis' remote-control power boat and a log.

But back to last week. After a couple of days without any contact whatsoever with Matthew I decided to brave the wind and the rain, find a decent phone signal and tell him about the trespassers.

"He did WHAT?" he shouted, on hearing of the middle-aged father of four and his offspring. "Well you must tell them to go away. Tell them all, in no uncertain terms. Either they go away or you get a gun. Isn't that what they do in the country, shoot intruders? Would you prefer a rifle or a revolver? I can get you a gun you know, really. I can."

It was then that the signal disappeared and I made my way back to the cottage to tell Louis that while his father was apparently in good physical shape, he was mentally pretty deranged.

"No change there then," said Louis, answering a knock on the door and finding a brace of tweed-clad ramblers armed with Ordnance Survey maps, asking for a Devonshire cream tea.

"Forgive the lack of hospitality," I quipped archly, sounding uncannily like Matthew, "but have you tried the hotel up the drive."

The following day I went to the shops and made the most of a good phone signal by having a long chat with Matthew who has come up with a solution to the trespassing problem. He says he is going to ask Richard, a Polish handyman of our acquaintance, to fashion some off-putting signs out of the wood left over from the construction of Miles the tortoise's summer play area. He says that while it is too late to do anything about the intruders during this visit, when we return to "my Devon cottage" for half term, we will be equipped with five signs that can be pushed into the earth around the perimeter of the cottage garden. "It's a simple but brilliant solution," said Matthew, "that unfortunately does not involve firearms."

The rest of our stay was peppered by visits from other apparently illiterate hotel guests and it was with relief that I arrived back in London last week to find Richard in the garden, hard at work making our signs. Four of them remained blank and he was painting some words on the fifth. "Ah, Richard," I said, "These look just the job. Did Matthew tell you what to write?"

"Yes," said Richard, "just two words he said. Very easy for me with my bad English."

He hadn't got far with the two words when I last looked. Just enough for me to wonder if perhaps the firearms might have been the more polite option.