In about three weeks’ time, Steve and I will be on a plane bound for Hong Kong and thence to Frankfurt. I’ll see Prague again, after all these years. I lived there for a year in 1990, during the transition from communism to capitalism. It was a grey, gothic place then, full of ancient scaffolding with ragged hessian hanging off like dreadlocks. Socially it was a timewarp, like going back to the 50s, not that I personally experienced the 50s. Very different now, I’m sure.

Bertie is bugger. He monstered a fox terrier quite badly although no skin broken. All very humiliating for the fox terrier and for me. He is lovely with people, goes bonkers around other dogs. This is very tiresome. I’ve been on a mission to socialise and train him, inching around the block, stopping and starting every few seconds, giving bits of bacon, being the Mad Dog Woman of Torch Street. The world is a different place when you’re a Dog Woman.