Every Lord needs a stately home

The aristocracy are renowned for telling the truth. OK, Lord Archer may have written the odd fictional novel. And John Prescott did once swear he'd never enter the House of Lords. But he's notorious for his swearing. Plus, he wasn't a Lord then - he is now. Have you heard him lie since? I don't think I have.


One of us now...

With this in mind, I'll tell you where I've been since April 28th. I've been searching for the woman I thought I'd call my Lady. Suzanne Alfred Akinbiyi-Beto. God's honest truth. Her email touched me on so many levels. I had to find her. I trekked through Europe, the West coast of Africa, down through Morocco and Mauritania, (where men revere a woman of a plumper nature), and through Senegal to Dakar. The home of my dear Suzanne. Except, when I finally knocked at her door, she wasn't home.

All that way and she'd gone without even leaving a note.

"You're too late my friend," said the man she'd been in care of, Pastor Dominik Nielson. "Pretty girls like Suzanne don't wait around. You own house?"

"No," I said. "What's that got to do with it?"

"She went off with man who owns house. From England, like you. Except she go to live in house; something you don't have." He chuckled loudly at my misfortune.

"But I own a title. I'm a Lord. That's got to count for something."

"Unfortunately, he was too. Lord Samuel Wooster, his name. Taken her back to place called Maid-Stone."

I couldn't believe it. Pipped to potential happiness by a fellow Lord. My new arch-nemisis. A Lord with land, and a home to call his own. I had no choice to return with a broken heart. And without a woman I thought I'd be calling Lady Ward.

The trek back was a long and depressing one, but gave me plenty of time to think about my predicament. I was a Lord, without a home. Every Lord had a home of some nature. A country pile and a city pad. More often than not a few thousand acres to go with it.

It got me thinking. I had my square foot of land. Why hadn't I built on it? It was the perfect location, amid the rolling hills of the Scottish Highlands. Plenty of room to organise a hunt with chums.

When I arrived back in England, I took action. I contacted my cousin, an architect called Aliena Archer, and we set to work rectifying my situation. Well, she set to work. I just told her what I needed and let her get on with it. She didn't disappoint:

It was perfect. Exactly a square foot at the base, with room to roam towards the top. A platform to shoot game from, too, should I wish. Exactly what I needed. OK, it may not have been a conventional Edwardian, mock-Gothic, 80-room retreat, but it was better than nothing. And surely enough to lure Suzanne away from the clutches of another Lord.

I decided then and there - I'd contact her via email in the morning. Along with Lochaber County Council, the jurisdiction my square foot of land lay under. I wanted to go ahead with it. I wanted to gain planning permission, and build myself a home fit for the modern-day Lord...

Lord Samuel Wooster. Genuine arch-nemisis from now on