We’re in North Norfolk, the beauty of which is one of the best-kept secrets in British life. Yesterday we went on a long coastal walk, and although I’m clueless about birds, in the course of the afternoon I saw: avocets, a curlew, black-headed gulls, a lapwing, cormorants, several shelducks, oystercatchers and lots of dunlins. The curlew seemed to me a Very Superior Chap, making his way delicately through the muddy creek like a Victorian gentleman with a walking stick.

No photographs, alas. Bird pictures require the carrying of serious kit, including the kind of lenses normally used only by those shooting celebs on Mustique. And certainly not what one would carry on an afternoon walk.