I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

The place didn't look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable.

If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.