First up, I lost a chunk of my left ear on Friday. Don’t get me wrong, it was no accident. It was removed with considerable grace and good humour by an NHS team in the course of excising a lesion on the left pinna. The offending intruder has been popped along to histology for the third degree. Meanwhile, Jane compares the reconstruction of my ear to a rugby ball. I think she means the old-fashioned brown leather type where the lacing was prominent, but it’s a bit harsh on the surgeons. In a few weeks, no-one will know anything has been amiss.

I was lucky too. My left ear was, until yesterday, larger than the right; now left and right are about the same.

We’ve done the range of ear jokes, of course: Van Gogh and the ones that equate deafness with stupidity – the ones that drive the hard of hearing to distraction. And a few weeks ago, with the slicing coming up, I visited an exhibition of paintings by Edouard Vuillard that included a study of an ear. It too was a left one, but was in better shape than mine.

Having a portion of ear lopped off, however, makes for a pretty tame day compared to the doings of our daughter-in-law. A paediatric nurse, on Friday afternoon Louise attended a job interview, got the job and, at midnight or so, toddled along to hospital herself, giving birth to a baby boy in time for breakfast.

17 August 2019, Sebastian Isaac Mathews, 7lb 10oz in old money, arrived.