People have been asking me what I’m going to do with all that redundancy money.

And there’s a fair bit of it, given that I’ve spent the last 28 years organising the working lives of an office full of idle solicitors.

“Will you travel?” they ask.

Ah, I say. I am a writer of stories. I travel all the time in my mind. I don’t need to leave my armchair to experience the thrill of new vistas. There isn’t a dusty corner of this planet that I can’t visit in my imagination. My dreams are vivid. As soon as I close my eyes I enter another world.

“Yes,” they say. “But when you wake up your mother’s still there.”

I’m booking a cruise tomorrow.