…Twenty-years-old is a grand old age for a cat. No cat could live to be twenty without having had the most excellent care. Don’t you think perhaps Pushkin’s time to die had come, and the whitebait was only most marginally connected to his death? Oh it is so easy to go over and over in one’s head what one should, or should not, have done with the creatures we nurture. I think Pushkin was a very wise little kitten when he chose Clive Murphy to follow home.

…The photograph of Pauline, animal lover, is like the one of me and Pip, taken by the Gentle Author. Same ‘breed’ of dog, same aged old woman. I like it that she and I are together, with everyone else – forever –in Spitalfields Life.