The presents have been wrapped, in red and brown and silver. The house is clean, and the laundry dried in time. But I am obviously becoming my mother and can’t throw out the newspapers I haven’t yet had time to read. No worry – this is what train journeys are made for.

Sarah was in town the other day, and we were talking about London news and New York news, and I said, “Yah! The Suffolk Strangler!” “They’ve picked up a second guy,” I said, because I say I don’t have time to read all the newspapers, but evidently I have time enough to read and memorise the crappiest bits, “and the papers interviewed his father, and the father said, ‘He can’t have done it; he’s not smart enough.’” “Oh,” Sarah said, “is he a Chinese mother?”