It has been a harsh month – full of darkness and sadness and death and division, so it is probably not the right time to raise my own rather unimportant problems, but I am going to because they illustrate something that I want to say: they are just analogies not claims or competition.

In the past month I have cracked a rib (for those who have never done so this is extremely painful especially if you laugh) and Bobby Hamilton died, very suddenly.