When friends of mine go on holiday, like everyone else, I tell them to have a good time. Like very few other people, I suggest they send a load of postcards. Of course, being busy – having a good time and all – they rarely send cards. They send emails when they’re back. Still, postcards feel important. Probably because I’m from a time when people used to give children postcard albums for their birthdays. Yeah. I’m that old.

A friend of mine used to be in sales. That probably sounds rather unspecific but, to be fair, I never really understood what it was he did. Except, of course, I knew that he travelled a lot. From one week to the next, he could be in any corner of the world, and often was. He went to several countries I couldn’t find with an atlas, a magnifying glass and a Sherpa.

Usually, we only got to hear about where he’d been when he came back, but once, when he’d been to Las Vegas, he brought me back a casino chip.

I was really touched. I still have it.