I spent 45 minutes looking for a book in the big Waterstones over by the University at lunchtime, and eventually found it tucked away in an obscure spot on a bottom shelf in an empty room off to one side of the second floor. No wonder I couldn’t spot it.

Coming back to the tills to pay for it, though, there was this awful overpowering smell of gas. Everyone did that sniffing the air but pretending not to smell it thing so we wouldn’t have to talk to each other, until one of the staffers came along and threw us out, and I had to abandon the book on a shelf about spiders, or dictators or Esperanto or something.

The attitudes of some people in London – after all these years – still amaze me. As we were streaming out of the shop, and milling around on the pavement, a man in a hat and a long buttoned-up coat barged through the crowds, pushing us to one side so he could get into the gas-filled shop.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the assistant blocking the door. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to evacuate the shop.’

‘Well, honestly,’ he said, and have him the nastiest look I’ve seen for a long, long time, then grumbled something or other about taking his custom elsewhere.

Londoners are just plain rude.

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