But it won’t be a problem when the time comes.”Last question: did she have any advice for Cherie Blair? Mrs Major emits a charming peal of laughter. Though tucked away behind the village post office, Lloyd’s Stoneyard in Great Bedwyn is not difficult to find. It’ll be quite a shock, seeing the backs of people’s heads again.”How on earth will she give it all up? She regards me steadily. “We have a home of our own.” You know what I mean (I say), have you got life planned out for when you leave here and Chequers and all the rest of it? “Oh,” she said with sudden blitheness, “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

We’re not planning for it just yet.” Would it be a blessed relief to go? “Let’s put it this way – I’m not in a hurry to leave. “Yes it’s nice, but I got it off the peg from Windsmoor.”What did she most enjoy about power? “I think the thing I’ll miss most is sitting in the front row It’s great – wherever you go, you sit in the front row. And, no, they don’t offer.” What about the lovely dove-coloured silk suit she was wearing? She looked down in an incurious, what-this- old-thing way. They’re still writing about `James’s married girlfriend’ because it makes a better story I resent that. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business.”Apart from that (Mrs Lincoln), did she enjoy being a prime minister’s wife? All those free seats at the opera… “I only asked for a free ticket once” she says firmly, “to see Don Carlos, which I love.” She giggles “Jeremy [Isaacs] was so sweet. He said, `How many?’ I said, Just one, Jeremy, I’m being quite selfish about this.” Did couturiers thrust their creations at her? She looked blank “I don’t use them I can’t afford them.

“She’s been divorced for a year, but the newspapers don’t want to accept that. Good Lord, listen – `The book tells of Norma’s friendless world’ (she laughs delightedly). And what’s this? `All of a sudden she was expected to sleep in the cramped, inhospitable private quarters of Number 10.’ But that’s not true They’re not inhospitable. They’re not cramped.”What has exercised her most recently, it seems, is the way the tabloids got at her son, James, over his relationship with Elaine Jordache, a woman 12 years older than him “It isn’t a scandal,” says Mrs Major. But she seems to have conquered her fear of Fleet Street’s Finest and can laugh off their more fanciful strokes. She asked me to explain to her the black arts of the “cuttings file” and I pulled out a two-inch-thick pile, through which she leafed, agog “Good Lord How extraord… From the day after election day (when, oh consternation, she appeared in the same blue frock twice running), to the recent announcement of the pre-election charm offensive, the press has been on her case, calling her “dowdy” and “ordinary”, outing her as a Teasmade abuser, satirising her as a fanatical cooker of peas.

Apart from bringing up Elizabeth (now 24) and James (21), and doing constituency work in Huntingdon, she has remained stolidly unimpressed by life outside the family hearth. Indeed, she seemed to dread it, confessing to feeling “physically sick with terror” when her meteoric husband was handed the Foreign Office in 1989.It’s this timidity that may account for her unfortunate treatment by the press. Really, I have happy memories of all my schooldays from four to 18.”Her CV is brief. She taught needlework and domestic science at Battersea College of Domestic Education, worked as a nanny for June Bromfield, the singer. She met John Major, then working in a bank, at the GLC election campaign in 1970 – it was, by all accounts, love at first sight – and married him the same year. And Mum would come down every weekend on visits and stay in Mrs Salter’s guest house. We used to go on the pier at Hastings and eat buttered toast and listen to the Palm Court Orchestra and go shrimping.