‘Do you reckon,’ I enquired on a visit to my wife in bucolic Dorset, ‘that this is an early sign of frontal-lobe dementia?’
Rebecca, who underscored her high intelligence and flawless judgement by vacating the marital home 13 years ago, pondered this.
I had prefaced the question with a report, laden with gasps of disbelieving self-hatred and flashes of the face from the Munch painting, of a recent incident over dinner with a friend, his partner and the latter's twentysomething daughter.
On hearing the word ‘pumpkin’
