I’ve never been much good at finishing off jobs.

You know, the tidying up bit. I think it might be a blokey thing. That syndrome where the kitchen looks like it’s been hit by a cyclone, with every single plate, pot, pan and bowl you own still crying out to be washed and put away three days after you’ve prepared a small baked potato for lunch.

There’s nothing quite like pulling out ones cricket boots in May, to find them caked with September mud and mould, and stuffed with two used socks and an old toe plaster.

And who can say that their camping holiday has not been enhanced by turning up to a wet field in Wales to discover that the inside of their tent is a deep shade of mildew?

I wish, I wish, I wish I’d cleaned off the barbecue last year.

I just don’t understand people. They insist on buying anti-bacterial cleaning wipes, thus laying us all open to death-by-superbug, but are quite happy to gorge themselves from a barbecue. Even my barbecue.

I was gonna do it. I remember. I had the scrapey thing and wire brush all ready, but I recall it was spitting with rain, we had people round, so I chucked it in the shed and promised: ‘I’ll do it in a bit’.

So cut to yesterday. I stepped back in alarm, then gazed in fascination at the interesting civilisation that had arisen on what I’d planned to cook dinner on in... two hours’ time. It was clearly highly noxious. I half expected Hans Blix to leap out from behind a tree, shouting ‘aha!!!’

They say that you know within eight hours whether food has poisoned you, and I’m still walking and talking. I examined my poo carefully this morning, and found nothing untoward. The key now will be to have a barbecue every single day between now and the end of summer, to avoid ever having to clean it off again.

And you’ll be pleased to know – my Sunday newspaper was there.