‘I’m Native American,’ said one half of the honeymooning couple from Plattsburgh, holding out a small gift as they left.

Very sweetly, she had come to present me with a token of her appreciation. It was two maple candies and a small sticker upon which was a sort of flag. This, she explained, was the emblem of her tribe in Quebec. I made all the right noises as the four of us stood in the farmyard where they had come to look for us.

Beside the girl, not saying very much, was her new husband, a rosy-cheeked, wholesome-looking boy with a buzz cut. He nodded along as she explained her origins. The builder boyfriend stood beside me in the sunny farmyard, and I took a deep breath and hoped he could cope.

When I saw them coming, I had hurried out the back door of the laundry room, which is a private area and has a big stag’s head on the wall wearing a Donald Trump tie. The BB wanted to put this stag’s head in the hallway but I said it would upset too many guests. So I tied an old pink tie of the BB’s around its neck and now MAGA Rudolph guards the washing machine and the horse saddles.

As the couple appeared around the side of the house, I darted out the door and we stood by the washing lines chatting.

The girl said ‘I’m Native American’ and I said: ‘How wonderful.’ I thought we’d got away with it, and then the BB blurted out: ‘Oh you mean you’re an American Indian!’

‘No, Native American,’ I said, very deliberately. ‘Yes!’ he beamed, ‘That’s what I said. ‘American Indian…’ The girl looked very calmly at him and said in a very deadpan tone: ‘I… am Native… American.’

I stamped on his foot, so obviously I had to say: ‘Oh, whoops, I lost my balance. Anyway, we’re so glad you enjoyed your stay.’

I had only just remembered to put flowers in the room after checking their booking, because I got it into my head that the last couple were the honeymooners. Luckily the roses were still going, so I put them back on the tea table for the real honeymooners, the couple from Plattsburgh.

They now said everything had been lovely but she wanted to have ‘the talk’ before they left. The talk is what Americans do when they depart, and involves them summarising their life. You have to let them do it or they don’t feel they’ve taken their leave properly.

We walked them back round to the front of the house, and then we stood on the driveway beside their smashed-up hire car – they’d caved in both passenger side doors running into things – and we carried on talking.

The BB took the girl and I took the boy and he told me all about how he was a tiny bit Native American as well, possibly.

‘I have to say, you look awfully Irish to me,’ I said, for it was ludicrous how Irish this chap looked. He looked so Irish that if he’d told you he was the great-grandson of Michael Collins you’d believe him. He said he didn’t have any Irish blood in him that he could think of.

‘Funny, because you really do look very Irish,’ I said, and his pale, boyish face was a picture of puzzlement. ‘Are you sure you’ve no Irish relatives?’

He went very quiet and you could almost hear the cogs turning and then he said: ‘Oh actually, my grandmother was from Sligo.’

‘Yes, that would do it,’ I said, thinking this boy is so Irish he can’t work out he’s Irish.

But I was also trying to concentrate on what the BB was saying to the girl who was explaining her origins in Quebec. I remembered she had sent me the booking inquiry in Irish, and I had had to use the translate function on Airbnb to see what she was on about.

As it was, she kept saying ‘Kennyinkyhaka’ and I kept wanting to say: ‘Bless you’

She was so into indigenousness, she had assumed I was best spoken to in the original Gaelic of the first peoples to inhabit Ireland, and had gone to the trouble to somehow write all her booking messages in this strange tongue, which hardly anyone speaks.

She now kept saying the name of her tribe, but so quickly that I couldn’t grasp it, and I wanted to, because it was interesting.

I looked up the native tribes of Quebec later and think it was this one: Kanien’ kehá:ka. I remember it sounded like she was sneezing. There is an easier way to say it, which is Mohawk, but it’s just as well I didn’t know that, for it’s unlikely that would have been indigenously correct enough.

As it was, she kept saying ‘Kennyinkyhaka’ and I kept wanting to say: ‘Bless you.’

She said her people had made common cause with our people, and she was obviously assuming we were Irish so we had to pretend we were, for it had gone too far.

She said the camaraderie between our two peoples was rooted in her people playing lacrosse and our people hurling. It all seemed very unlikely. Then, as I chatted with her husband, I could hear her telling the BB that she didn’t agree with hunting. Ah, she had seen the stag’s head. But it got weirder. She said her people had special permits to hunt and this she did agree with, because it was part of their culture.

‘It’s part of our culture,’ I wanted to say, but didn’t. The BB said: ‘It does, of course, make a huge difference to the animal if it’s slaughtered for indigenous cultural reasons.’ But she didn’t get sarcasm, thankfully.

The boy was telling me more about his possible Native Americanness. I stifled a yawn. ‘Actually me and him are part gypsy,’ I said, nodding at the BB. ‘You know, Romany?’ But he said he didn’t know. He wasn’t interested in what bits of us might be exotic.

As they drove very badly down the driveway, the BB summed up his feelings: ‘She was an East Coast vegan leftie and he looked like a Tarmacker from Limerick.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘He’s from Sligo.’