It’s a bleeder, said Gareth, my dentist, as he applied another swab to the gap out of which he had just extracted a recalcitrant molar. He was rather excited. Look at that, he’d said, holding up a bloody tooth with some straggles hanging off it. It’s all come out in one go. Normally you have to spend ten minutes scraping and drilling out all the bits. Not with this one. Everything in one yank. That’s very rare. I didn’t know whether to be proud or humbled. £240 later I crossed the road and dropped into the clothes shop Massimo Duti to kill a few minutes. The salesman was I really like your jacket. It was an old corduroy I had bought second hand over twenty years ago. Yes I said. It’s comfortable. He was still admiring. Saville Row? he said. I told him I thought not.

Still. From a bleeder to a leader in ten minutes.