Down to Kent to say a final farewell to my grandmother, lover of sweet treats and the only member of my family who was prepared to drive me to church when I was a teenager. I owe her a lot.

Though my abiding memory of her is when I returned from school after she had been left in charge of my two youngest siblings to find her hopping round a paddock in a child size wizard’s hat and cape whilst they (aged circa 6 and 7 at the time) shot at her with a pellet gun.

Believe it or not, in my family I’m one of the normal ones.

My grandmother used to become complicit in plans to dump white goods on my father’s land (largely cajoled by my other grandmother, his mother, still alive and dangerous). As I looked out a window at my parents’ place earlier I saw a dumped fridge and washing machine and smiled.

The sight of two women in their late 70s manoeuvring a fridge leaking CFCs across an ornamental lawn to an outbuilding for my apoplectic father to discover at a much later date is my equivalent of Proust’s madeleines.