A castle from the late 16th century, completely devoid of anything electrical that actually works, along with very poor protection from the rain.

This decay has been going on for a while now and, without realising it, I’ve become a victim of a lesser-known mental illness.

Psychiatrists are still working on the official classification but, for the time being, it’s simply known as “ihatethishouse” because one of the defining characteristics is sufferers utter this at least five times a day.

It’s been two years since the crackling on the telephone line first started. It was averagely annoying at first, but nothing excessive.

The cause was unknown, so therefore the cost of fixing it was going to be high.

A month later, the washing machine started to make an excessive amount of noise. At the time I just put it down to a form of protest at forcing it to wash my cycling shorts.

So now the phone’s crackling and the washing machine’s noisy; it’s annoying but not so bad.

Hold on, why is there water pouring through the kitchen roof?

Ahh, that’d be the guttering, it’s fallen off the wall.

But you learn to live with it; visitors pop in, they’re surprised by the rain pouring through the kitchen ceiling, the noise of the washing machine but you’re adapting to it.

The is known as the phase of acceptance, but things were about to go up a gear. You can take my phone, my washing machine and guttering – but don’t touch my television, which is exactly what happened next; the Sky digital box unexpectedly went onto standby.

“Have you just turned Sky off, I was watching that,” I said.