Pere has many things hidden in his sheds, but I am struggling for a few of the essentials. I have some panels for an ersatz wall, some loudspeakers for authoritarian announcements, and even a uniform in the colour of the East German border guard.

I painted a door frame brown, to resemble a machine-gun (though when I look at it I think: “That is a door frame, painted brown – and badly too.”) I also made a vehicle checkpoint barrier.

Well, I put a girder between a couple of large paint pots and painted “Halt” on it. But this basic approach speaks strongly of the honest simplicity that will mark the glorious Republic of Nowhere.

Only a decadent capitalist would paint stripes on a barrier, or give it a rope to be pulled up with, when there are workers who are perfectly happy to fulfil their patriotic duty to the Republic by shifting it themselves.

However, despite all this progress in the glorious new artistic utopia that is being built; despite searching high and low, looking under every rock and making tens of woodlice homeless, I am having no success sourcing the following crucial – and fairly mundane, I think – elements:

10 T-62 tanks (T-34s would have done, I´m not a perfectionist)
1 1960s-style Berlin skyline
1 JFK lookalike (for “Ich bin ein Berliner” moments etc)

So, for now, the pile of tyres that was already there and a few painted blocks of wood that I have decorated will have to do.

But luxury and surfeit is for the weak. Onwards comrades, towards the bold future that we will build together in the Republic of Nowhere!