Another nameless relative enters my room. This is late afternoon. I sit up straight in my bed, trying unsuccessfully to look as if I was conscientiously studying, rather than reading the Dick Francis paperback, with its loud red cover.

My father enters the room behind said relative. Aimless chit-chat, my face contorted into the uncomfortable rictus that I fondly assume is a smile.

My father, while out walking Thor one morning, slipped on the wet grass and now has a hairline crack in his sacrum. He walks over to the life-size picture of a skeleton and pointing to it proceeds to show the gentleman where exactly he has a fracture. He points to a place somewhere in between the coccyx and the ischium. (My father, in spite of his voluble learnedness on the subject of the consonant shift, has an endearing lack of medical knowledge.) Aforementioned nameless relative scratches chin, and looks at the skeleton, and wonders aloud, like so many before him, how I sleep at night with that hanging over my head.

My facial muscles begin to ache.

Nameless gent continues in much the same vein, as my father watches with some amusement; he has probably endured nameless gent for as long as he could, before embroiling me.

Nameless gent having exclaimed at the number of books on my table (I never tidy up), the printed out song lyrics decorating the walls (quite avant-garde, isn’t it?), and the guitar lying dustily in its corner, finally got up and walked towards the door.

‘Think about where you want to be in ten years. That’s how one should study, with a goal, pictured in one’s head.’ Having dispensed this piece of splendid advice, which fell on the floor like meaningless aphorisms generally tend to do, he took himself off.

He left me wondering whether, in ten years, I’d have long hair in a ponytail in a desert, or close cropped hair in an air-conditioned office. I still don’t know.