My flatmate Poppy is just coming to the end of her degree in costume design.

She’s in the final few weeks of her course and has been busy making some amazing outfits. As a result the castle has been awash with dressmaking pins. And these keep turning up unexpectedly, like in people’s feet.

Fat Sister had a particularly painful encounter with one a few weeks ago. Since then each time she’s visited she’s searched out pins like an obsessed magpie. Last week she found thirteen in one afternoon and Poppy came home to find them all carefully lined up on the ironing board.

They’re tricky things, pins, and seem to get everywhere. They’ve turned up in beds, in the toilet and even down the road at Leftwing Idiot’s.

I had a ‘ticcing fit’ this evening and towards the end, when I’d regained my speech, I raised my hand and asked Leftwing Idiot to, ‘Take it out please’. We both laughed as we looked at the tiny stick of metal that impaled in the padding of my glove.

I suspect that like sequins, pins are going to remain a regular feature of life at the castle.

Photo: Laura Page