Greetings to the Diss Friends of the East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices who gave me a warm welcome at their annual fundraising lunch last week.

They raised a goodly sum.

It had been some time since I last visited the town. I think it was in 1988 that we took our five-year-old son Mark to Banham Zoo where he buried his small model of Star Wars’ Yoda in the shingled area outside the lavvies. We searched but failed to find the tiny Jedi. Upset, Mark was.

Arriving in Diss ridiculously early, I whiled away some time at the new Morrisons where a gentleman from the Dogs’ Trust inquired if I was a dog lover.

I smiled and gave a small nod, with which encouragement he went on to ask: “Then can I bother you for two minutes?”

I beat a hasty retreat. I don’t think a supermarket lobby is a suitable place to have one’s shoes sniffed and hand licked...