My youngest sister once asked my mother at a mealtime

“Why do you give Charles bigger helpings than us?”

My mother looked at her as if she was mad.

“Because he’s a boy.”

It never occurred to me once throughout my childhood that this might be unfair.

My first wife was a West Indian, from Grenada. We set up home in a bedsit in South London.

I was sitting comfortably, reading a book one day, while she vacuumed the room. I lifted my feet to allow the brush head to reach right up to the armchair.

She said something.

I looked up.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Your hands round?”

I was puzzled. I glanced at my fingers.

“No.”

“Good,” she said, “then you can go and...

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