In those far-off days — about a month ago — when I was cutting my milk teeth at being a B&B hostess, I had, almost literally, a baptism of fire: 10 overnight guests had turned up in the kitchen simultaneously, all eager for their classic British breakfast.

They found me in my striped pinny, pans at the ready. The children, as yet unschooled in guesthouse etiquette, ran in and ran amok: Tybalt handcuffed the Christian headmistress to her chair, while Hero let go of her hamster in the cornflakes.

Then, a frying pan spat fat into my eye and plumes of smoke issued from my crap toaster (a false economy) and set off the fire alarms. Thankfully, I had an exceptionally nice bunch of people staying, who remained nice even after being forced into an impromptu fire drill to the accompaniment of tympanum-busting sirens.

So when Steve informed me that my state of the art fire- alarm system was switched off, my eyes glazed as I cast my mind back to the fire-drill incident. As I returned to the present moment, and Steve swam back into my field of vision, it occurred to me I must have forgotten to reset the alarm.

Thank God for Steve. Life has drastically improved since he moved in. After three years, my beloved PA — who single-handedly sorted out my work life, not to mention my emotional one — has moved on. I was pondering what might be the best way to replace the irreplaceable, when a friend put me in the way of Steve.

I had been thinking it might be nice to have a bloke about the house, and talked the matter over with a friend. She laughed, tactlessly, saying she’d read an article entitled “Rent a Husband”. Apparently, it’s all the rage in the States, where women have been booting out their loved ones and replacing them with the professional article. A live-in fella: my mind’s eye saw him rustling up exquisite meals, mending broken loo seats, putting up shelves and generally managing the place.

Then Steve breezed in last Monday. Now, not to put too strong a point on it, life is bliss. Within moments, he logged every outstanding household job and marked them all in order of priority. He is efficiency personified, gets on fantastically with the children and is lending a hand with the other chapel — the one I’m planning to develop and sell — as well. Heaven must be missing an angel.

Steve trained for five years as a chef at Bodysgallen Hall, a fab hotel and restaurant that’s usually beyond my purse, and that first evening, as I ate tuna steaks on a bed of ratatouille (made with 10 vegetables), I thought of the concerted effort I would have to make to keep from getting too attached.

One advantage of this B&B lark is that it keeps me on my toes, socially active and is turning out to be fantastic fun. Once I found myself scraping together a supper for two headmasters who arrived at 10.30 in the evening. They imagined they could just drop their bags and head for a pub and a quick meal.

When I made it plain that there would be nothing doing, bar a chilled sandwich from a petrol station six miles distant, they opted to go for whatever I could rustle up. We spent a pleasant hour downing beer and chatting.

Then there were the two ex-junkies who came to stay: one now works for the Home Office advising on drug-related crime, and the other is involved in funding rehab programmes. I could have happily talked to them for hours on end. The next day, they were even on cue to rescue me when my 40-year-old MG caught fire as I, the picture of cool in my sunglasses, was sailing down the Llanberis pass. Dust in the braking system had caught alight owing to my riding the brake while going downhill.

Luck with my guests, then, and with my new major-domo, but not so lucky with the scrap-metal merchant. He ignored my instruction not to take anything that wasn’t on the skip and cleared out the garden, helping himself not only to the MG’s rollbars and window frames, but also to a neat pile of cast-iron guttering. Now, of course, the bugger has vanished, and there’s not a scrap-metal yard within a hundred miles that admits to ever having seen my haul.

Never mind. I’m pressing on with the new chapel and have met with the architect. It’s quite daunting going back to that “blank canvas” stage. Kevin the builder and I agree (miraculously) that we should keep it as one property; the architect and the estate agent reckon the only way to turn a profit is to make it into three houses, or split it into flats.

I expect I’m being stubborn and short-sighted, but it would make such a spectacular single dwelling, and I’m really loath to scale down my vision. I’m fed up with cutting my dreams in half.