‘Pull yourself away,’ she called in that bitter chicory tongue. More annoying than taking a trip to the moon only to spin around the car park in an old panda, whizzing round on a perpetual handbrake turn while the dirty blokes dog in the steaming cars set in a circle, the panda at its centre, interminably spinning, headlights flashing, catching the odd globe of flesh, lighting up hunks of sexual butchery.

Before the turn of the last century I became embroiled in a mammoth game of rounders up on the top field. We played over six months, one half of the village against the other; the council estate versus the scoffing homeowners. And when we finished, the dogs stood and applauded, waving their dirty piss-stinks like a bunch of rubber rats caught in the zip of bulging denim jeans that hug the flesh.