IT was a while before we noticed anything wrong. Returning from holiday is always the same, with worries arranged on a sliding scale of neuroses, from a broken window all the way to a smouldering hole where your house should be.

None of the above had happened and the house was there, intact and inviolate.

If we had looked more closely, we may have noticed the missing cufflinks and the small pieces of jewellery gone astray. But we didn't and so the wardrobe kept its secret for a while longer.

Our bedroom is in the attic, three floors up. At a glance there was nothing wrong with the room, although one of the bedside lamps had fallen over.

Why would that have happened? A strong gust of wind, perhaps. I righted the lamp and looked about. Someone has been in here, I thought. Very strange, or perhaps I was just being neurotic.

After a while, I noticed other signs, not many of them pleasant. Something odd had happened while we had been staying with my brother at his house in Brittany, France. He bought the house last summer for a sum that might just about secure you a well-appointed shed in York. It's a cottage with its own ruin attached. I should like to be able to say the same about our house but that ruin at the bottom of the garden actually is a shed, rather than a piece of splendid wreckage.

At my brother's place, the remnants are bigger than the attendant cottage. There are two gable ends and a back wall. The stone walls rise until they crumble into the sky. On the wall next to the cottage, there is a huge, Elizabethan-style stone fireplace. The picturesque gap where the old house once stood is given over to gravel and plants, and it was here my brother chose to spring his surprise.

Our holiday was centred round a 40th birthday party for my brother's French partner. Filled with champagne, he made a speech. He rambled a bit, said one or two funny things (in French and English). And then to everyone's surprise, perhaps even his own, and certainly his girlfriend's, he proposed. She burst into tears and accepted. More pops were corked or something like that. And a long night stretched a bit longer.

Meanwhile back in York, an intruder was busy at work. Of course, I have no idea when this interloper came into our bedroom, but it could have been while we were all partying.

You may have guessed by now, especially if you are quicker off the mark than I was, but I did have the long drive as an excuse.

Yes, the trespasser was a bird, a wretched pigeon. It must have come through the Velux window, which some fool had left open. Which particular fool it was has yet to own up.

Bird muck decorated the room, not in large amounts, but still an unpleasant sight.

We tidied up like mad, vacuuming and washing, and changing the bedclothes. At some point, frantic flapping worried the now closed window. No thank you, Mr Pigeon - you can stay out. Or, as it happens, Mrs Pigeon.

Almost done, I climbed to look on top of the wardrobe.

And there it was - a nest with an egg at its centre. A nest of twigs, stolen pens, cufflinks and cheap jewellery. Right on top of our wardrobe.

It is not, as you can imagine, still there. A thorough cleaning got rid of the horrible arrangement, egg and all.

Now, as the holiday begins to fade, we have another sort of memory flapping around. Does anyone know how to get rid of a pigeon whose homing instinct is still telling her to go and sit on top of our wardrobe?

Updated: 10:49 Thursday, August 29, 2002