“Hands up!” I shouted, and the people in the room all froze. Then, a second later, they all burst into laughter, and looking down I realised that the black, vicious-looking object I was holding in my two clasped hands wasn’t in fact a Tariga pistol – or even a good old-fashioned Uzi or anything useful like that. Instead it was a crow. Again.

The bird cocked its head, did an eye movement that on a human would be both sarcastic and impossible, and gave me a sharp stabbing blow with its greyish beak.

“Ow”, I said, and dropped it. Well, I let go but it didn’t drop to the ground. Instead it soared over the ducking heads of the still amused spectators and took up a position on the gilded head of a cherub amongst the ornate marble of the Embassy’s entrance hall.

As for me, the security guards either side of the door weren’t slow to explain – demonstrating excellent non-verbal skills, I thought, although admittedly I was probably somewhat biased – that my attempting to hold up the Swiss Embassy, whether or not armed with a crow, was not being seen as a joke.

They really don’t have any sense of humour, you know – security guards, that is, not the Swiss.

So anyway, I was marched fairly unceremoniously through a side door and into the bowels of the building, then deposited in a small windowless room with two hard chairs and a grubby grey metal table – all clamped to the floor, I couldn’t help noticing – and left there, presumably to reflect upon my sins. Which, admittedly, were many.

I took advantage of the peace and quiet, climbed up onto the table and went to sleep.

Some time later, I was woken by the door opening to admit a tall, lean man with a shaved head and wearing an expensive suit. He looked rather like the more skilful kind of Italian footballer shortly after he’s become a manager for the first time. I half expected him to start talking about how “the lads all played well”, but sadly he was more interested in my little corvid jape.

Sadly for him, that was. Because a croak in the implant in my inner ear let me know that the entrance hall was about to be filled with the most hideous smelling gas, and as the sirens went off and the man turned his head to the door, I tried out my line again.

“Hands up!” I said, making him look back at me instantly, a half smile on his lips. Only this time I really was pointing a Tariga pistol at him.