When family invade your privacy

I try to head for cooler climes year-round but particularly during the summer, as anything over 20 degrees has me sweating like a pervert and swearing like a docker. But this year I was persuaded to join friends in Corfu, and so with my younger daughter in tow, I braced myself for the inevitable perimenopausal response to savage heat. 10-year-old Ottilie, of course, loved it instantly. Reflecting, as she basked in the balmy waters of Corfu Old Town, that while she’d loved our holiday in Iceland a few weeks previously, and while she agreed that Norway is a peerless destination, she could now understand why some of her friends like a Mediterranean jaunt. Indeed, a war of attrition for a return visit next summer commenced pretty much immediately.

But as I bemoaned the undoing of years of cold weather grooming, one of our party returned to London to an even less desirable situation.