The ridiculous “taxi” swerved clownishly into the drive way of number 29, neatly clipping a (no doubt) cherished bough of white freesia from its parent bush, the blanched and waxen bells evoking with their split perfume momentarily—but just momentarily—the sunlit riverbank of my childhood, with its cool ferns (mist, borscht, mother, midges) and rescuing from their lunatic perambulations my disordered thoughts, which, like so many crazed sheep, had been straying far from their comfy ancien regime fold ever since I set foot on this ridiculous continent.