It turned out Leonard’s mother had instilled in him an ethos that learning was a lifelong commitment. She herself had learned to speak French at the ripe old age of ninety-two, even though, crippled and confined to her bed in a studio flat, she had no hope of ever making it to Paris to put her perfectly conjugated verbs into practice. And so, even though Leonard could take apart and rebuild any television, toaster, radio or mobile phone on the face of the planet, since his retirement he’d honored his mother by showing up for every free adult-education course the Penzance Community Center offered, as well as quite a few others around the county.

So now he knew more about wedding-cake icing, woodwork, Photoshop, welding, online marketing, calligraphy, genealogy, short mat bowls, soy candle-making, screen-printing and how to cook a proper Spanish paella than his mother could ever have dreamed. And even though he knew some of the younger people on those free courses were really only there so they wouldn’t get their benefits cut off, the joke was on them, because they were still learning.

“How wonderful is that, Sadie? Lifelong learning! I did this all thanks to Photoshop for Beginners, first three Wednesday evenings in March. Week two, the magnetic lasso tool! It’s an extraordinary thing! Oh, and I asked Norman for some photos to use when I was here the other evening. I... I hope you don’t mind. So...you like it then, my dear?”

I more than liked it. I loved it. And as for minding, I was so busy loving it I totally forgot to worry about what it was for. Anyway, Leonard wasn’t waiting around for an answer.

In between proudly zooming in and out of the screen to show me some of the details, he explained that Little Big Man was a reference to a 1970s Western movie he and Iris loved that starred Dustin Hoffman trying to pass himself off as a half-pint Native American man who was very small but also very brave.

“Your Norman put me in mind of that name as soon as I met him, Sadie. Don’t you think?” Well, I did, yes, although I had no idea what it had to do with his potential comedy career. But it turned out there was at least some measure of method to Leonard’s madness.

After spending a week researching the Edinburgh Fringe, Leonard had discovered that, being what’s known as an open-access festival, you didn’t actually need anyone’s permission to perform. But the problem was finding a time slot in an appropriate participating venue in order to put on a proper show, as opposed to just setting up on a street corner. And, despite sending more than fifty emails to various places on the official festival list, as well as quite a few others that weren’t, Leonard had not yet had any responses from his attempts to get Norman a performance slot. Which I didn’t find the least bit surprising and is, quite frankly, the point I would have given up, if it were left to me. But not Leonard. The Fringe opened in two weeks, so with time ticking he’d decided to create Little Big Man in order to rustle up some interest.