I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It's not a wine, it's a life, right there in the glass.

The trouble with shooting people, Edie Banister now remembers, is that it's so hard to do just one.

That's what you get for ignoring the beauty of Tupperware.

Newton's work on gravity led to the discovery of the Lagrange point, a place where opposing forces cancel one another out, and a body may remain at relative rest. This is where I am right now; the forces in my life confound one another. Better, for the moment, to be here and now, without history or future.

The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

The Brit abroad is always the voice of caution. Persons of other cultures are known to be undisciplined, prone to leaning out of car windows and cooking with garlic.

Never mind, never mind, let's get to the part where we smite the unrighteous. I've brought my most alarming teeth!