I have just been crawling under the double bed in our bedroom, with a torch, looking for wildlife – all part of living in the tropics. Worst thing is I can’t find the blessed thing. It is still in our room somewhere, and is bound to make himself clammily felt at some ungodly hour of the night.

I had just brought in the washing from the line – which included a pair of dark green double bedsheets. I dumped the lot on the bed and grabbed up a sheet to fold without looking – and closed my hand over something cold and wriggly and very much alive.

Dunno who got the greatest scare, me or the tree frog – one of those ones with legs longer than its body, bit like jointed cantilevers with suction caps the size of thumb prints on the ends. It shot up in the air as if it had springs, almost hit the ceiling as it sailed across the room, made two more extravagant leaps to nowhere before disappearing under the bed.

Trouble is, it was no long there by the time I had recovered enough to look. And it had peed on the sheet too, darn it.