I answered the door, and standing there was a man who looked like that man I’d seen on the TV the night before. Bernard, something. Bernard. Jewish. Critic. I remember, Levin.

“Who is it now?”, Mother called down the stairs, even though she forbade shouting between rooms as only “Common People” did that.

“It’s a man who looks like Bernard Levin”, I called up without turning my head.

“I am Bernard Levin”, the man offered rather apologetically; handing me a book, a hardback, wrapped in a crumpled brown paper bag, recycled it seemed from some hurried lunchtime egg sandwich at his Critic’s desk at The Observer. I wondered. The book, not inside the bag, wrapped round it.

I notice, and remember, things like that. And his fingers, slightly brown, mottled. Liver spots. Long. A pianist’s. Later, I would tell Mother he had “Daniel Barenboim’s fingers”. And she said, of course you guessed it, “Then it’s about time he gave them back”.

Details, I notice, in lieu perhaps, of The Important Things in Life I always miss, Mother says. And she as everyone knows, is never wrong. How could she be?

Even 35 years later, I remember. But then, I am 35 years too late for everything. Spending the last 35 years remembering, the first 35… The Nothingness, like two-day stubble staring back at me as in the shaving mirror.

I said, embarrassed but not knowing why, like a child running naked from a swimming pool. “Thank you”, even though I didn’t mean it. A skill I picked up, contagiously, from The English. Even though in his hurry, he didn’t close the gate properly. Or because I never got round to fixing the latch. I’ll never know which.

I took the book up to her boudoir- the big bedroom. Making a mental note to forget to remember, not to buy her an Observer on Sunday.

“He doesn’t like your book”.

Mother didn’t look up but carried on typing.