Before I went on my truffling holiday last year, everyone knew I was crazy about those round little parcels of stinky delight. I had a box in my cupboard in which I was collecting enough coins to be able to afford a thin slice of white truffle on my pasta (at £3,500 a kilo, it was a very, very thin slice) and I talked all year about the Alba truffle festival in October.

It should have been a great holiday. Three days of truffle school, with the last day’s big hurrah: a truffle hunt led by Bilbo, the school owner’s dog. It didn’t turn out like that.

The teacher was defiantly old-school and all he wanted to do was talk about truffles. I wanted to gorge myself silly on the things, not look at textbooks of their usage through the ages or watch slide shows about their ectomycorrhizal properties.

Salvation came in the form of Tod from Worcester. Tod was one of those posh new builders who seem to have sprung up recently – horny hands and generally horny bod, but also able to pronounce his aitches. The first night, we flirted over dinner. The second day in school, we were like naughty children and got told off by the teacher, which only made it funnier. The second night, we snogged. The third day, we bunked off school and ran down to the woods. I brought a bottle of local Barbaresco, some artisanal cheeses and, of course, slices of lots of different truffles. Tod, being a more practical type, brought a green waterproof groundsheet big enough for two.

In no time, we had eaten a little, drunk a lot and, freed of all inhibitions – and clothes – were making wild builder love under the trees.

Then we heard a dog barking. And, seconds later, the voices of our schoolmates. Tod quickly pulled the groundsheet over us and shushed me, and we lay very, very still. We were quite a way off the path, so they should have walked straight past without noticing anything. It didn’t turn out like that.

Bilbo the dog went into a truffle-hunting frenzy, yapping and howling and screeching as soon as he caught our scent.

The next thing I knew, Tod was fighting to hold onto the groundsheet and fighting with Bilbo, who was trying just as frantically to pull it off us. There could be only one winner in a fight between a posh builder trying to keep his new love’s modesty intact and a highly trained truffle dog.

The result was that our pasty, naked, muddy, truffly bodies were soon exposed to a dozen open-mouthed classmates as Bilbo finally managed to get the groundsheet unwrapped. Even worse, once the sheet was opened, Bilbo went into overdrive, trying to work out where the last of those little slivers of truffly pleasure were hidden.

I was trying to cover my modesty, refuse the advances of a lapping tongue (not Tod’s) and, for some deplorable middle-class reason, keep smiling the whole way through.

And the stupid teacher? He finally got his revenge. Before he dragged the class away, he lingered – just long enough, he said, for the sensory overload on poor Bilbo’s nose to wane, allowing them all to continue truffle-hunting elsewhere. Now that the mood had definitely left us, there was nothing left to do but go back and clear out our rooms before the class returned.

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