It was almost midnight and we were queuing up for unspecified fun. R joined our party, complaining that she was still not pregnant. SL, HJ and I shot one another a glance. This was not the time and place to express that one’s sole purpose in life is to reproduce (and anyway, if God meant her to become a mother, this is what she would be).

Behind us in the queue was a man with a Teesside accent and a big nose. He clearly knew who I was and invited me to guess his identity. My first suggestion was PN. Then it struck me that this was V, an old friend of my brother-in-law M.

V introduced me to his (current) wife, thirteen of his numerous children, and showed off his fine collection of glass ornaments