Distance is always helpful, and the fact that I'm a U.S. politics junkie helps a lot.

It's not for me to share the meanings of others. I am only in charge of my own.

To get to Earth from the edge of the solar system, depending on the time of year and the position of the planets, you need to pass through at least Poland, Prussia, and Turkey, and you'd probably get stamps in your passport from a few of the other great powers. Then as you get closer to the world, you arrive at a point, in the continually shifting carriage space over the countries, where this complexity has to give way or fail. And so you arrive in the blissful lubrication of neutral orbital territory.

He'd actually done it! He leaned back into the microphone and whispered to the now silent cave: 'Come to the Cabaret!

Rumpty!" he muttered, which was very rude if you were one of the few people in the universe who understood what it meant.

John Smith: Mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour. Let's hope that from now on this country can find its heroes in smaller places. In the most ordinary of deeds.

The brilliant escape, the funny line to cap it, despite the lack of timing. And the girl was still dead. The last act had not materialised. The world, and himself, remained so far from what they should be: so imperfect.