I am guessing, but there are probably more people in an undiscovered Amazonian tribe than the number of people – like me – who enjoy filling in questionnaires.

Here is a tale of some of the questionnaires I have completed….

When we arrived in Deepest Sussex, and realised we were very oil dependent, as in no gas in our hamlet, we joined the local Aga-oil-buying consortium – and we had to fill in a questionnaire/form.

At the end of it, we were invited to choose which of the local churches we would like the savings (from being in the consortium) we wanted to donate to.

I was all ready to say the Portsmouth Mosque when a cooler head said, ‘ We have only just got here. Not yet!’

In the run up to what has been a very busy Christmas – all those succeeding waves of visitors seemed like such a good idea in October – I was up early and in my email was an invitation to take a YouGov questionnaire.

Among the many and varied questions was one which said, ‘ If you were asked what the wise men should give christ as a present in today’s world, what would you say?’ (or words to that effect.)

I said, ‘An abiding commitment to atheism.’ They didn’t ask me any more questions.

Once, and stop me if I have told this story before, I was in the Charing Cross Hotel in London, having an after-event drink with a good friend.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a mouse skittering across the bar area.

‘I just saw a mouse, ‘ I said, not surprisingly.

‘Ah,’ said my friend, ‘ I saw it too, but I didn’t say anything in case you were scared of mice.’

We agreed that it was probably the case that all large London hotels had mice and ordered another wine and settled down to more interesting conversations.

By coincidence, the then owners of the Charing Cross Hotel emailed me a questionnaire a few days later asking me to rate my stay.

It was fine generally and I said so, but under the ‘any other comments’ section I did mention that they really needed to keep mice out of the bar.

Well, the next thing I knew I was being sent all kinds of emails assuring me that the ‘rodent issue’ was under careful scrutiny and could they treat me to a free night in the hotel with dinner and wine and so on.

Of course they could. I went up to London, stayed a night, invited a non-too-affluent friend for a slap up meal – and not a mouse to be seen.

( I was going to add a final line which included the bad pun about a long tail, but I thought better of it.)