An indulgent playmate, Grannie would lay aside the long scratchy-looking letter she was writing (heavily crossed ‘to save notepaper’) and enter into the delightful pastime of ‘a chicken from Mr Whiteley's’.

He had planned to ground his son for a month, but relented and decided to give him a stern lecture instead.

We raise our estimate of the likelihood of Greek EA exit (‘Grexit’) to 50% over the next 18 months, from 25-30% previously. This is mostly because we consider the willingness of EA creditors to continue providing further support to Greece despite Greek non-compliance with programme conditionality to have fallen substantially.

This earbone criterion may seem esoteric — until we learn that the evolution of that bone structure is related to the development of a single lower jaw, which in turn, is associated with the fact that mammals, unlike, say, lizards, have differentiated teeth that allow for different kinds of chewing.