We find having President Trump as a neighbour oddly normal

Late one night last week I arrived here in Palm Beach for my annual winter stay with my kind and generous American hosts. Only the next morning did I realise that the rented house in which I am a guest this year is a very few doors away from Mar-aLago, the “winter White House” and favourite weekend residence of Donald Trump.

We know Mar-a-Lago well, as we go to concerts in the gilded (but actually perfectly tasteful) ballroom that the Donald built for himself when he bought the 126room house. The Spanish name signifies that its 17-acre plot lies “between the sea and the lake”, which in Palm Beach means between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway.

This house was built for a breakfast cereal heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post, between 1924 and 1927. On her death in 1973, she left it to the nation, hoping it would serve as a presidential retreat. Yet no president wanted it until Trump, and he already owned it when he got the job; he bought it in 1985 for less than $8 million.

My host arranged to rent our house in the pre-Trump spring of 2016. He had no idea that last Friday, from my left bedroom window you would see concrete roadblocks, and a large black sedan, which blocks the sole space between the barriers. When anyone is given permission to cross the barrier, the car reverses into a drive.

From the right window you see another set of barriers, plus tents housing the car inspection apparatus, which includes a handsome alsatian sniffer-dog.

It’s noisy here, because we’re near Palm Beach International airport; but all flights were rerouted as soon as Air Force One landed. One of the residents here confides that she welcomes the president’s presence: the absence of flights and traffic means you can hear the sound of the ocean lapping on the shore about 200 yards away.

Having the president as a neighbour becomes normal very quickly. On Saturday, two of our household went for their regular walk on the beach, passing numerous Secret Service officers, who ignored them with professional courtesy: just ordinary beach-goers, albeit heavily armed ones.

At Mar-a-Lago itself, they saw three more guards, looking unconcerned, a blonde woman and a small child – one thought it was Ivanka, the other not.

Sitting by the pool, facing the security tent just over our garden wall (a man came here on Friday to ask if they could “borrow” this house’s electricity supply), I heard someone over the wall sternly shout “Stop”. But peace returned swiftly and there were soon the sounds of genial conversation.

There is some inconvenience. We’ve had professional helpers turned away and dinner guests unable to get to us. My host drove to his Saturday appointment at his gym, made a little late by the security; but on returning he was stopped near our front door, and challenged about living in this house, though he’d taken the precaution of carrying a copy of the lease in his car.

The guards are rotated randomly, it seems, so the fellow that checked him out and said he’d remember him was no longer there.

He was remarkably goodnatured about it; but then, the entire surreal experience is already starting to feel quite routine.

After the departing roar of Air Force One broke the weekend silence, my host had a chat with the security chap stationed in front of our drive. “I’m not supposed to tell you this,” he confided, “But we hear he’s coming again next weekend.”