When touring NZ, the only thing that’s more amazing than the view from the top of a terrifyingly winding and motion-sickness-inducing hillside road is the view from the peak of the next alarmingly twisty, vertiginous, tarmacked goat track. The odometer may say you’ve travelled 27 kms, even though, as the crow flies, it’s barely a couple of wing flaps.

Cabin crew will now indicate the location of the emergency exits, fitted with token-operated turnstiles to facilitate the smooth exit of those passengers who opted for the Survivor Fare upgrade

Don’t treat us as invisible. We have money to spend. We have friends we actually talk to. We can even tweet. Combining the grumpiness of a Russian dictator with the cunning needed to get children to eat Brussels sprouts, our vindictiveness could well contravene the Geneva Convention. Don’t turn your back and don’t go to sleep. Ever.

Middle age starts in the brain and works outwards, with grumpiness and bitterness the advance army for the sort of physical decline that suggests decomposition is making a pre-mortem start. If you don’t believe me, try to think of a youthful and devastatingly attractive shock-jock. There’s not one that would get as far as the bathing suit round of a blobfish beauty contest.