Daphne du Maurier? I don’t look at all like her. It’s OK, I knew what you meant and, no, I don’t think I try too hard to follow in Reka’s footsteps, as a matter of fact. She came to the UK with nothing, she worked hard, meanwhile simultaneously teaching herself to be an amazing musician. She ate well, swam and walked every day, and lived an extraordinarily long and varied life. At seventy-five, she still looked utterly fierce and people often mistook her for fifty. In a twenty-five-month flood of inspiration she summoned three of the best albums of all time out of the heavens and onto tape and even more impressively she did it in her forties, a time of life when society believes that the best-before date on most singer-songwriters’ talent has expired. As soon as she had enough money to be comfortable she gave a substantial amount of her income to wildlife charities and women’s shelters, but she never felt the need to shout or point at herself as she did it, or at least only did so in a way that might encourage others to follow her example. Between 2061 and her death she took in a total of seventy-four ill or elderly donkeys and looked after them on her land. She had tattoos of every species of plant and animal mentioned on RJ McKendree’s Wallflower LP, and of a crow biting into Satan’s neck. She won several awards for her gardening. Nobody was better at flipping an omelette with absolute precision and balance. By a conservative estimate, she saved the life of at least seven sheep whom she found in dicey predicaments while she was walking the moor. She lived in four different countries, had romances with several inspiring and unusual people of both genders and died in the place she loved most passionately. I don’t think trying too much to be like that is possible, is it? And if it is, there’s certainly nothing wrong with it, in my view.

OK. I was just asking.

What animal are you today? I am sensing… moorhen, maybe? No. Bigger. Cormorant?

Not all that far off. Merganser duck. The ones you mistook for mandarin ducks the other day. It’s not an uncommonly made mistake. But it’s the males of the mandarins that are the startlingly pretty ones, whereas with the mergansers it’s the female who has the crest on the back of her neck and wears the nice clothes.