Sunday August 8th.

'May you live in interesting times' is traditionally interpreted as a curse. Sunday 8th of August then was blessed. But boring. Nothing happened.

And yet boring is grossly under-estimated. Every child should be bored - should endure long tracts of it - so that their imaginations can be kick-started, rather than merely consuming the imagination of others. Books are excluded from this fine theory because in fiction, two imaginations are necessarily involved. I endured huge tracts of boredom as a child – long, wet Sundays in Liverpool and two years on my back in hospital. Boredom is an undiscovered continent, a cerebral jump-lead.

But I wasn’t pontificating along these lines on Sunday the 8th of August. The morning was spent somewhere close to a toilet, the rest of the day we read, sun-bathed and swam. Some would call this a perfect holiday.

Things picked up in the evening. Reports came in that a major hurricane was heading our way. Earnest discussions ensued; should we take refuge in flight, or put down our tents and seek refuge in more substantial buildings. To my relief the latter course was chosen. I’d never seen a hurricane.

But this was Sunday 8th of August, and so nothing happened – other that a squall of heavy rain as commonly experienced on Blackpool Pier. Someone came on to me quite strong, but it was Sunday 8th August for her too. I spent the night watching an evangelical preacher on TV. He was good value, strutting the stage and bellowing damnation. It wasn’t convincing. It was Sunday the 8th of August.