This morning, as I prepared to leave the house for the gallery, a chat box popped up on the computer screen, alerting me with a squawk. It was my daughter.

‘Did you see my message?’ she demanded.

‘No.’ I replied.

‘Read it! Read it now!’

I clicked the inbox, but my laptop is slow, tired, and at the limit of its available memory. A message appeared, vanished, and the computer froze.

The chat box squawked again. ‘Have you read it yet?’

‘No.’ I tried to answer, but the message disappeared.

After multiple attempts, the message opened up. ‘Be prepared.’ It began ominously.

‘Best night of my life’ it ended. There were tales of success with writing, handsome men, fashion shows, intimate gigs with Axl Rose, and other excitements. ‘I’ve just got back here’, it read.

She’d been four feet away from Axl Rose. She was impressed.

As we installed the mosaic at the gallery a distinguished bearded gentleman came down the stairs. ‘A mosaic!’ he observed. ‘Are you going to grout it?’

We don’t plan to, I said. ‘It’s made from medieval fragments, and they have to go back into boxes in the Museum collection, where they came from.’

‘Ah!’ he said, tolerantly. ‘I made a mosaic once. Under the water it looked rather good! It was in a pool, you see.’

‘So you are an artist?’ I surmised.

‘Yes. Indeed. And so was my father.’ He opened up a carrier bag in a slightly conspiratorial way. Inside was an Edward Bawden catalogue. ‘I am his son Richard’.

Now I was impressed.

My father had a heather farm. His name is Richard too.