First up, best dressed is a warning for flatmates where the laggard must take comfort from the prospect that ‘An overcoat covers a multitude of sins’.

 Like the overcoat, research can include a richness of distractions. Asked by her professor what she was doing, one graduate student answered ‘Research’. ‘That’s good’, returned the professor. ‘These days most people seem to be photocopying.’

Far from the resources that Canberra provides, I have been doing research in the form of wider reading. The alleged focus of this bed of pleasure is M. Bernard Eldershaw’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow which has been on my mind since 1971 when I first read the mutilated 1947 edition. Until Virago issued the uncut version in 1983, one of my delights had been to track down second-hand copies for students and friends, pressing Tomorrow and Tomorrow (as the earlier version was called,) on them as a lost masterwork.