He’s a great friend. He knows everything. Please don’t let him phone

Another sunny Sunday morning and the phone rings. I pick up the receiver. It’s Frank. I groan inwardly. Frank is a doctor and an old family friend and a great talker. What he has to say is always intelligent and interesting and often funny. He will explain scientific laws or philosophical arguments or biological functions with elaborate care and in the simplest possible terms, so that even a child might understand them. My immune system, for example, is run by soldiers with powers of arrest and internment, constantly on high alert for terrorists. His talk is invariably sprinkled with his favourite Jewish jokes, and bawdy songs, which he breaks into with little or no provocation, his cherubic face aglow with pleasure. But he has zero emotional intelligence and his talk is always delivered in the form of an interminable and exhausting monologue.

So on this sunny spring Sunday morning with the primroses out and grass to be mown, he’s the last person I want to talk to.