I don’t know how it happened, but one day I became a middle-aged geezer who sometimes wears a hat.

I’ve never lived far from the Thames. I grew up in Abingdon, a market town overshadowed by the gleaming spires of Oxford to the north and (formerly) to the south by the cooling towers of Didcot Power Station – which have preoccupied me ever since. I went downriver to London to get a very ordinary degree in English and thereafter stayed in the city.

South London has been my home since 1991. I have a wife and three grown up children. Until recently, we had a springer spaniel and a marmalade cat.

These days, I am, mostly, a radio producer and an abridger of novels for the Fiction Serial on BBC Radio 4. In 2019, I added Post-Sepsis Syndrome to my CV.

An unremarkable life, in so many ways: but sometimes I need to remark on it …