About the boys and the youths and the young men and the old men and the women (yes, yes, the women) and the piano tuners and the violin teachers and the professors and the safe breakers and the circus dwarfs and the security guards and the pop stars and the fan extraction engineer and the cucumbers and the Coke bottles and the aubergines and the Lithuanian and his brother and the Maltese and his wife and the three Yemeni diplomats (Camilla! Arabs!) in full regalia and the five French-Canadian pole vaulters and the gas masks and the rubber gloves and the pulleys and the harnesses and the wet suits and the parachute silks and the anonymous toes under the table and the ownerless thumbs in the Tube and the nameless ones and the faceless ones and the legless ones (no, no, Camilla; yes, yes, Barney) and the priests and the nuns (need I say that Camilla was a Catholic?) and the Ibo lawyer and the steel band from Grenada and …

Enough already?

Who? Me? Never.

Or at least not until I had broken the back of every hand and operative in the semen factory that had once been my body. Only then, when I was literally a spent force, did I yield to pressure from the unions. ‘All right,’ I would say, ‘I think that will do for the time being.’ And then I looked for soft soothing words and disclaimers. ‘I take it that you’re speaking figuratively,’ I would show Camilla that I understood, flat on my back on her bed, looking up at the beams of her pretty other-worldly cottage, while outside the sea clawed its way back into the land. ‘I take it that there wasn’t actually a Scottish caber-tossing team.’

Camilla was always matter of fact. ‘Of course there was. I wouldn’t lie to you, Barney. I’ve got no interest in elaborating fantasies.’

‘And no need either,’ I said bitterly.

‘No, no need at all.’