Poverty, Therefore, Was Comparative. One Measured It

Nothing Succeeds, They Say, Like Success. And Certainly Nothing Fails Like Failure.

The Middle Years, Caught Between Children And Parents, Free Of Neither: The Past Stretches Back Too Densely, It Is Too Thickly Populated, The Future Has Not Yet Thinned Out.

How Extraordinary People Are, That They Get Themselves Into Such Situations Where They Go On Doing What They Dislike Doing, And Have No Need Or Obligation To Do, Simply Because It Seems To Be Expected.

England's Not A Bad Country? It's Just A Mean, Cold, Ugly, Divided, Tired, Clapped-out, Post-imperial, Post- Industrial Slag-heap Covered In Polystyrene Hamburger Cartons. 286

I Used To Be A Reasonably Careless And Adventurous Person Before I Had Children; Now I Am Morbidly Obsessed By Seat-belts And Constantly Afraid That Low-flying Aircraft Will Drop On My Children's School.