A lifetime seems a pretty roomy place when you’re a kid: plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely childhood, followed by years and years of learning and practising how to do stuff, before Mum cuts off the pocket money and you need to get a job and worry about all the things that grown-ups worry about

Given that my poor teeth are only held together with gobs of amalgam, I really should not, ever, gnash them. However, sometimes gnashing (and possibly wailing) is the only proper response to extreme provocation. Take last Friday for example.

Epiphanies often arrive in the most ordinary of circumstances - while you’re lolly-gagging your way along the road to Damascus for example - and this week’s epiphanies were no exception. The first arrived as I flicked through a women’s magazine at a local garage, while waiting for a friend to get a W.O.F. for her car. 

Kate Winslet Is That You?

I wrapped the dog in a blanket, lifted him gently into the car, and took him to the vet. Beside him on the seat, I folded a red quilted jacket I bought 30 years ago on a freezing December day in Seoul. If Pete had to be put down, I planned to wrap him in my old warm coat and take him home to bury him.

What stands between us and the half-mad woman who stinks of cat’s pee, we wonder: a fall; a house fire; the sudden loss of sustaining, life-long friendships; an ill-advised investment; an unaffordable rise in the cost of rent, power or food?