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In a red plaid shirt and green jeans, he walked first one way and then the other. My bushes behind him mimicked him; a mix of green and red blowing first one way and then the other.

He was looking for the house he bought. Everything had been settled over the internet during the last week, he told me. He had been planning to move away from the city for years.

I gave him a lift. I knew the house. It had been empty for a year and a half. When he saw the picture a week ago, it was love at first sight, he said.

‘It’s the kind of place you settle down, you know?’ he said, looking first one way and then the other out of my windows. ‘A place to raise three kids and for them to come home to at Christmas with their girlfriends and boyfriends.’

Later he told me he was single.

I saw him at the shops many times after that, running first one way and then the other. He did a good job of renovating the house, although the façade ended up being both a light lilac and blue and a deep green around the door. He had an extra living room built with a large fireplace and then he had a windmill installed in the garden.

We only have two pubs and one of them is too local for a first date. So I saw him date first one woman, then another. Sometimes several at once. They must have been from the internet, because they were not from around here.

About a month after he had the windmill installed, he asked me out. I said I had enough to do with my dogs and my sheep, I did not need children as well. He told me that he did not mind not having children, and I asked him what the house was for then. His words blew first one way then the other, until I said:

‘No. My new puppies are more decisive than you.’

His face showed first one emotion then another, and he sold the house next week.