Being Jewish, and bolshie only within certain limits, when I was 13 I had my bar mitzvah. In those days, the presents that aunties and such like would give were as ritualised as the ceremony itself: alarm clocks, suitcases, maybe premium bonds.

One person broke the mould: a friend's mother was a schoolmistress with a firm cast of mind, and she gave me the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. I probably stared at it with disdain. The alarm clocks bust long ago, the suitcases fell to pieces, and God knows whatever happened to the premium bonds. The book is on my nearest shelf now, an arm's length away; I use it constantly.