Together with our friend, we drive to the Coates English Willow Visitor Centre, where baskets and many more wicker items are still woven from willow rods. There’s no limit to the variety on offer, as we discover right at the entrance. Here, two wicker elephants greet visitors. In the shop, we buy tickets for the museum and have a quick look around. As well as useful and decorative items – chairs, baskets, suitcases and other containers – they also sell DIY kits containing willow rods, tools and instructions so you can try your hand at weaving wicker goods.

At the museum, we learn how willow was – and still is – planted, nurtured and tended, pruned, boiled and, depending on its intended use, debarked and dyed, all with a great deal of manual labour. In the past, it was used to make anything that needed to be light, robust and rigid, yet still slightly flexible – especially when an unusual shape was required. Fish and lobster traps, for example, carpet beaters, umbrella holders for carriages, external trunks for early cars, wicker bottles, carrier boxes for carrier pigeons, even aeroplane seats, beehives, carrying baskets for donkeys and mules, and indeed even early wheelchairs and prams were made from it. Today, they are still used to make laundry baskets, beach chairs, hot-air balloon baskets and more. Coffins, for example. And something we didn’t know: even the tall bearskin hats worn by the Royal Guard at Buckingham Palace have an inner structure made from willow wicker from this area.

We round off our visit with lunch at the café. Gabi orders a ciabatta sandwich, our friend a baked potato and I have a farmer’s ploughman’s plate with cold cuts and cheese. I realise that I really don’t like blue cheese.

So we’re off to look for a few more Halloween decorations, bowls and cauldrons for “my” Halloween party at the office. We could buy an incredible amount here – including balloon arches and three-metre-tall inflatable ghosts… but we want to take it easy the first time round and leave room to build on it later.

With a few nice bits and bobs and a dessert for tonight packed in our bags, we first drop our friend off at home and spend a bit more time at the hotel before heading back to her place. We’re invited round for dinner again and enjoy her Guinness sausage stew with mashed potato and peas.

Afterwards, we watch the latest episode of The Great British Bake Off together. It’s Bread Week, and for some reason all the contestants are struggling. Even Nigella Lawson, who’s been judging the bakes alongside Paul Hollywood since this series, is finding it hard to come up with anything positive to say. We do love to cook her Coca Cola ham at Christmas. Even before the programme has finished, dog Mickey lets us know that it’s about time we left: he wants to go to bed. Yes, yes, Mickey, it won’t be long now.