The skip man laughed as he took pity on me, the daft English blow-in who was taking the EU rules on rubbish disposal literally.

‘You put so much concrete in that skip that if I weighed it in properly it would cost you a thousand euros,’ he said.

I told him I really didn’t mind paying the going rate. He said he wouldn’t hear of it.

‘If you’ve got land you can always get rid of concrete blocks by filling holes with them,’ he said. ‘Don’t be putting concrete into skips.’

We ordered a skip and the company boss was appalled that we put lots of stuff in it we could have fly-tipped

The builder boyfriend, hard at work clearing the farmyard and barns, was aghast as I trotted outside to tell him his rookie mistake. ‘I don’t want to fly-tip on my own land!’ he said, making a pile of old lino he had removed from a back room, before demanding I order another skip.

It’s disorientating to have re-entered the EU to escape from its rules. But I’m delighted and not entirely surprised to find that the Irish stick their middle fingers up to most of the red tape from Brussels.

We lit a bonfire in our farmyard shortly after we got here and when someone called it in, the builder boyfriend was flagged down by a council official, not to be issued with a fine, but for the official to tell him how disgusted he was that a neighbour should do that to us.

The pair of them stood by the roadside discussing who it could have been. Most likely, the official thought, it was someone with a grudge against the council, trying to give him extra work by making him come up to the house to inspect our fire. As long as we assured him we would order a skip he would say and do no more about it.

So we ordered a skip and the skip company boss was appalled that we put lots of stuff in it we could have fly-tipped.

It’s all to do with the sort of EU membership you want, and the Brits really didn’t nail this. Nor did we nail leaving. It made no difference either way – in or out, we still obeyed the rules, which was some feat to pull off.

I have received a very polite complaint letter from a reader questioning how I, a Brexiteer, could possibly dare to go and live in the EU after everything I have complained about. But he only thinks my move is hypocrisy because he has bought into the idea that Europe is an institution, not a geographical place.

Long before the EU was unsuccessfully telling people how to dispose of their rubbish in west Cork, my forefathers were humping grapes off a mountainside in Abruzzo, thank you very much. The builder boyfriend hails on one side from the Channel Islands, on the other side from Naples.

Despite being ardent Brexiteers, we have both travelled extensively, in Europe and the wider world. Shocking, I know.

So far as I can make out, the Irish, like the French and the Italians, are only mad keen on the European Union in the sense that it provides them with farming subsidies and free tractors.

When it comes to its rules, their view seems to be that you can take them or leave them, depending on what’s in it for you.

Our neighbours keep telling us about the grants we could apply for to do up this old house. Everyone puts in for these grants. We often joke that the reason we can’t get any tradespeople like plumbers or electricians to turn up is because it’s a full-time job sitting at home filling in grant application forms.

You have to fit your trade around it. ‘Nothing is for free,’ I told the BB. ‘I don’t want to have to feel grateful to the EU. They’re not bribing me.’

A Eurosceptic friend of mine pointed out that another way to square my move, politically speaking, is that one day I can vote for Irexit. I would have said this was completely unlikely before moving here. Now I’m not so sure.

There is growing anger aimed at an establishment that has started labelling anyone who complains about anything as ‘far right’.

This hackneyed insult becomes finally and totally meaningless once you start applying it to the Irish, for obvious reasons.

When Leo Varadkar threatens to use water cannon on Dubliners for rioting after three children are stabbed in the street, you think what next, rubber bullets? Black and tan uniforms for the police?

Truly, the indiscriminate misuse of the term ‘far right’ has plumbed new depths now they’re slapping it on people whose ancestors starved in the potato famine, or fought alongside Michael Collins.

So yes, I look forward to joining this lot if they ever mount a second go at independence.