A few weeks ago I had lunch with my brother-in-law. First we discussed our unseemly mid-life urges: his to do triathlons, mine to buy bright green shoes with six-inch heels. We then moved on to our respective professions – opera singing and writing – and the question of how one can go on getting better at these after having spent a quarter of a century trying.

He told me that following his last, flat-ish decade, he had recently put on a spurt, and was now singing better than ever before.