IF YOU are ever trying to cure yourself of an unhealthy or addictive craving they do say that a spot of over-indulgence can work wonders. I remember as a schoolboy once eating five Mars bars one lunchtime, and I don't think I have managed to eat one since. I believe it is called aversion therapy.

One person for whom this method plainly didn't work was the former owner of the ruins that we recently purchased. For some reason best known to themselves, his family didn't appear to collect up any of the personal effects of old Sévérin Dumoulin after he shuffled off 1970s. It has been left to us to clear out all of his old empties, wine barrels, tools, x-ray photographs and paperwork. The task has not been helped by the fact that half of the roof collapsed a few years ago and buried the accumulated belongings of a lifetime under rotting timbers and debris.

What started as a somewhat dusty version of The Antiques Roadshow has swiftly deteriorated into an episode of Danger UXB. We have uncovered two shotguns, a rifle, a pistol and a huge amount of unexploded ordnance, including bags of gunpowder, shotgun cartridges and live bullets.

A rather worrying discovery, because in order to make any kind of headway we have had to be rather selective and consign a large number of boxes and rotten timber to the bonfire. The occasional shotgun cartridge on the fire does make a bit of a scary bang, but is nothing compared to a bullet whizzing around.

It was while carefully sorting through a suitcase of paperwork that, among the old electricity bills and Socialist Party cards, we found Sévérin's official certificate declaring him to be a WW1 veteran, having been wounded in the course of his duty to defend France against Germany and her allies, and therefore entitling him to wear a tricolour ribbon and an enamelled star.

This tied up with the rusting helmet that we found in one of the outbuilding. Incidentally, I must say I am rather shocked by the penny pinching of the French procurement department for buying helmets made of steel not much thicker than the foil that I wrap my sandwiches in. No wonder they lost so many men.

Having spent his time in the trenches, literally up to his neck in muck and bullets, you would have thought that he would never want to hear a shot or a cry of agony for the rest of his life. Not so, because among his collection of weaponry we found several sacks full of gin traps. Enough, in fact, to wipe out the cast of Watership Down and the best part of Bambi. My full complement of fingers attests to the fact that fortunately none of them were set. They have now been consigned to the same hole in the ground where the bullets are residing.

As for this aversion therapy nonsense, I wonder if an overdose of ruins can stop me from buying any more. But there is that lovely tumbledown farmhouse just down the hill: it has only got horses in it and imagine what it would be like! The views...