‘You certainly gave us a run for our money,’ said the village elder, serving us with what appeared to be the official goodbye statement.

The builder boyfriend was flabbergasted. He had been walking across the green with the spaniels when this gentleman, a leading light in the community, came towards him. He braced for impact because the last time they engaged outside the house it had not gone well. The builder b had, on that occasion, been wearing his old navy-blue towelling dressing gown and was putting out the bins. No doubt I shouted at him to go and do it when I heard the beeping of the reversing garbage trucks.

Poor BB was just doing as he was told when this pillar of committeedom walked past with his wife and dog and unceremoniously informed him that he looked like a tramp.

To be fair to the couple, the BB had furnished them with a mouthful before that, because while he was wheeling the bins into place it appears that they rather unwisely set about enquiring of him why he and I did not like living in their village, and why we did not, therefore, just leave.

‘On the contrary,’ said the BB, ‘we like our village very much, thank you.’ And I suppose it was the conversion of ‘their’ village to ‘our’ village that pushed the gentleman over the edge, prompting him to point out that the builder b looked like a tramp.

I did not disagree with his analysis, because I was growing thoroughly sick of that old navy dressing gown myself. Shortly after, I finally got around to buying him a new one from Sainsbury’s.

‘So embarrassing,’ I kept muttering, after he told me, although the BB was adamant that no embarrassment should be taken on board by us. The whole thing was an infernal cheek, in his view, the pot calling the kettle black.

He fulminated at length about the physical appearance of the gentleman in question, who he said was wearing a ‘Freddy Krueger’ hat. Thereafter, to emphasise his point, he referred to the old boy as Freddy Krueger, the fearsome character from Nightmare on Elm Street.

However, as they passed each other again the other day, the builder b told me he was careful to smile. The house is sold, we’re going to Ireland and we don’t want any more battles because, frankly, it would just be pointless.

We’ve tried to stop the parish council banning horses from the village green and we’ve tried to stop them planting trees across rights of way.

We’ve fought parking wars, street light wars and, most notably, wars about weeds, which led to surely the most imaginative correction ever seen when the editor had to publish an apology to ragwort after I attacked its unrestricted presence on the village green and a ragwort defence group took me to the press complaints body for hate speech against a species.

We’re quite tired, understandably, having got mostly nowhere with most of these issues, because you can’t counter illogic with logic when it comes to Surrey lefties.

The BB had resolved to let the man call him a tramp, or a ragwort murderer, or whatever else he wanted to call him, because he hadn’t the incentive to argue with him or any of the village people any more.

But to his astonishment, the man smiled back and came up to him, saying: ‘I see your house has sold then? Well, I wish you well. You certainly gave us a run for our money. Good luck with everything.’

In other words, he was obviously relieved we were going, but showed a grudging respect for us, perhaps because we fought so hard on the issues we felt strongly about, or perhaps just because we fought.

I’m not sure I understand humans, specifically, but I do understand animals. I know that when you introduce a new horse into a herd, they either accept their position at the bottom, to be bossed around forever, or they fight.

Horses who do not have it in them to submit risk all kinds of injury and bother to kick and bite their way up the pecking order, and each time they win, they must decide whether to stick or keep going.

In a herd of, say, 15 horses, they could fight three fights, and accept position 12, for example. But most troublemakers continue to kick and bite, compelled to take on all-comers until eventually the insurgent comes to the attention of the head of the herd, who must intervene, or risk losing their own place.

I can see it from the point of view of the horse who must keep order. Having a couple of bucking broncos wreaking havoc in your herd is the last thing you want.