The dusty, gritty smell of cold night air – tinged with petrol, clutch-plate burgers and bad coffee – that’s the good-memory smell of so many road trips up and down the N1.

Weirdly, it’s suddenly triggered by light on the faces of some actors in a TV night-scene, just like those tall, tall lights you get at the national-road gas stations in my memory.

Why am I even writing it down?  Who can note every memory flash brought on by a sight, sound or smell?  I don’t know; maybe it’s because the past is not another country, it’s a mirage – a mirage that lives on in the memories of a tens of thousands of people.

This time has to be the biggest disconnect in human history – no Coca Cola for a million years, and then suddenly it’s everywhere. No, I can’t articulate it, but I know what I mean.

Today I heard that sharks are moved by the phases of the moon.  That’s lovely when it’s about butterflies, but this news must be less than good for seals. I think that seals must also be moved by the phases of the moon, but in very different ways.