It’s Friday night and 35 degrees so it’s time for a BBQ and cocktails. We were sitting in the garden having a lovely evening when, through the flicker of a citronella candle (there’s more bugs here than bats in the bat cave), I realised that the Batman ‘garden gnome’ could be seen.

When we moved house the removal men broke just two things… One was a cute mug with an elephant on it (a gift from my Mum but no big deal really – sorry Mum!). The other was a £300 Warner Bros 24″ Batman Statue.

All credit to the removal men that that was all they broke. They wrapped, packed, transported and unpacked over 5,000 Batmen halfway accross Europe. All with pointy ears, gloves with fins, fragile capes and general high ‘breakability’. Let alone the art…

As we unpacked we discovered Batman’s torso and Batman’s legs were no longer connected. Queue very upset Scifi hubby and slightly freaked out removal men. The language barrier didn’t help as they only spoke German and Scifi hubby is Yorkshire through and through. “Tut mir leid Frau Scifi…” The insurance company were great and quickly paid out the value we told them.

As it happened this is one of very few things that we own two of. The second is safely in an attic in its original box. As a result Scifi hubby couldn’t really be too upset. The insurance paid for a few new toys and the broken Batman, now valueless, had his legs glued back on and he became a rather expensive garden gnome. Shhhhhhh don’t tell Scifi hubby but I quite like our Bat-gnome.