Exhausted after a busy few weeks, with a free hour but virtually no spring in my step, I headed to my one-time home-from-home, Selfridges, to see if I could reboot. Armed with my mother’s dashing and wildly characteristic birthday list (“an axe and a fancy vest”) as well as vague thoughts of Christmas, I decided to take the temperature of this store that I used to visit briefly every day, and see if I could get my bearings. In other words, I was on an outing, dimly searching for a cure.

I was in the sort of mood where I needed wisdom from an elderly lady on the bus, or to marvel at some exquisitely dressed mannequins, or to see splendid confectionery displays, or intricately decorated gingerbread residences in descending sizes, or boxes of immaculate stationery embossed with golden pineapples, or winged shoes, or congratulations cards addressed to those who are coping and sympathy cards for those who are teetering ... I wanted some colour when all about me, certainly all my clothes, were shades of grey.