Kipling nearly killed me last week, but Anthony Trollope saved my life. I mentioned here not so long ago a mental picture I had, while putting the bathroom clock right, of the ladder slipping and the glass of the shower partition slicing through me like a fattened cerdo ibérico on the Feast of St Martin.

That was merely a waking anxiety dream. This time I was up the ladder in the scrap of passageway that I like to call the hall and had no inkling of any danger. Suddenly the top of the ladder slipped from the shelf edge, which splintered. I would have plummeted like a supersized lemming had it not been for a volume of Phineas Redux (in the World’s Classics series) selflessly wedging itself under the flat-faced crossbar at the top of the ladder, which had till then been happily leaning on the shelf above. It didn’t do Phineas Redux much good but I was left to shimmy down the treads to the floor far, far below.