“He said they ate road-kill all the way”

I AM cheering up a lesbian on a sofa, in London; a “washed-up old lezzer”, as my sister describes herself, now that she is single again at 45.

My sister has approached the break-up of her long-term relationship in typically understated style. “Weekends are tough to get through,” she said at the start of the summer, in a piteously cheerful abridgment. Ever since, her five siblings and close friends have been jockeying for position on a Cheering Up Rota, which we drew up quicker than you can say the word ‘heartbreak’.

It’s hard to get on a cheering-up rota when the person for whom it’s been drawn up is the best kind of woman there is in the world. Competition has been fierce, I tell you. But I’ve got myself a slot, so I’m sitting on her sofa, and thinking how this cheering-up business cuts both ways, for we’ve just returned from a burlesque show in the Café de Paris. And it appears she’s holding good on her promise to help me book my family’s holiday accommodation in Puglia.