First, because my mother speaks below, I need to discuss her attitude to mortality. I recently told her that I've got to the death-aware stage of life. She said, 'Even the great and the good have to die, Iestyn.  Jane Austen, Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn...favourites of ​yours.'

​  ​I asked who she might list as favourites of hers that are no longer with us. She answered, 'Oh, very much the usual. Lena Zavaroni, Elsa the Lioness and Arthur Askey.'

  There are two five star reviews so far on Amazon.

  From strangers, too. My family, merely strange, are adding to the feedback with answerphone messages.

  My stepmother: ‘Iestyn, I’m on page eighty-five…don’t know what chapter that is.’

  My mother: ‘You’ve got your Mairs confused.  The Mair I bought all the elastic for over however many years was the one who broke her television and had her leg amputated — she’s very much on her way out. The other Mair lived in Pimlico and is completely dead.’