…Mrs Wade has gone into hospital because she has had a heart attack…

Well, that told me.

I offset any feelings of guilt or remorse by spending the morning ploughing through three cards of SMP, followed by the “sloppy mess” that was cheese pie (it being a Monday), potatoes and tinned tomatoes.

Not that I believed I was in any way directly responsible for the old lady’s predicament. I just felt, well, like I’d helped do something a bit wrong. Or at least, had once had some thoughts that were a bit wrong.

Later still, I realised it was easier to just not think or feel anything at all, and stepped up my displacement activities by “tracing a map of the Newcastle underground – the Metro, for short”.

It would be a full 25 years, almost to the day, before I actually got to ride on it.