It was approaching the end of the hols. By now the rocks were turning pink and gold in the setting sun, as we followed the track all the way to the crag overlooking the narrow channel between La Maddalena and Caprera. The waves thrashed the sand into a creamy froth and a dark cloud scooted by as a Vespa X125 crawled up the shoelace road on the far side.

The sky glowed blue and crimson and a bright silver moon lit her face. With a nod of silence and a gesture of ambush, we leapt out of the Cinquecento and got entangled with the seat belts and bashed our head against the door post; Kiki stumbled and I tripped and fell as we tried to slide nonchalantly but urgently and purposefully over the bonnet, but the gear-stick hooked my Calvin Kleins and the radio came on playing a smoochy ambient salsa number on Radio CentoQuattro. None of this was in the script.

There was no snow, but above us, we could make out Casimir signalling with a dodgy red laser pointer torch to a posh yacht in the estuary. The message flashed “drugs coming now, send money in dinghy”. An outrigger RIB was setting off towards the cove below and Donatella was hauling a great tea-chest down the cliff. Clearly we had them in ‘fragola delicissima’. We snapped a few dozen digital photos from our camera phones to show the different angles and trajectories and pecking order and chain of command and to establish accountability irrefutably at ICC standard.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up with the excitement, the inside of my stomach churned in fear, the pukey taste in my mouth grew sickening, my pupils dilated but they were not looking, the palms of my hands sweated like lemonade, I gripped the sphincter of my anus firmly shut. I made my will, repeated a mantra I had learned in the Hindu Kutch “Om Mani Padme Hum”, and screamed out allahhoackbar. So Kiki crawled through the bushes at the front of him and distracted his attention by miawing like a pussycat stuck on branch. Meanwhile I snuck up and surprised him from the rear with a huge contrarian exposure.

At the critical moment Kiki said: “Aaah Haa – We’ve got you, you evil motherfucking bastard. You’re no goalkeeper, you’re a low down piece of trailer-park trash. You’re a shit head, a butt-head, an air-head, a dead-head, now say your prayers cos you’re goin to hell tonite.“ and she showed him what he wasn’t expecting. At that signal, I whipped out my very big gun from under my belt, where it was itching a bit.

The Magnum glinted in the moonlight, and as I scratched my crotch in a manly fashion, I said “Drop Everything and Hands Up”; he began to drop all the things he could reach. Just at that instant a green fluorescent crocodile was ejected from the vortex in the lagoon below the cliff and shot high into the clouds playing Land of our Fathers from loudspeakers in its abdomen. And, although it’s hard to believe, in its jaws, it was clutching a little Chihuahua, yappin away like crazy. The croc landed direct on the tea-chest which exploded in a cloud of white bicarbonate of soda. The sea boiled like soda water and we nabbed the villains and made out charge sheets on the spot.

A boat trip round the islands costs as much as a day’s wages. But the skipper gives you a bowl of spaghetti in pesto.

The planners they creep around with dressmaker’s tape-measures and check the height of your fence and the length of your pergola; they authorise or they prohibit, but they won’t give you any advice or guidance. If they don’t like something, they call it ‘suburban’, but the narrow tracks of their little brains are entirely subterranean. They take brown envelopes and they are a complete and utter waste of human genetic material.