My strange and wonderful tenants

You might find it a bit rum to open your front door to a stranger and hand over your door keys and alarm code as they head for an upper bedroom. Around a third of erstwhile landlords would now agree with you and have ceased renting, while the call for such affordable room at the inn continues to grow.

Half a century ago, we answered a tap at the door to a beautiful woman, standing in the snow in kitten heels. She was a Maori, a chieftaness no less, having slaughtered her first sheep on the family North Island farm at the age of eight. She lingered, getting married two years later in our back garden, and even produced what became a second-generation lodger.

Emboldened, we put a further ad in a South London rag in response to which a professor answered the call, an academic from Los Alamos nuclear centre, teaching our boys martial arts, though without the nuclear option.