France, even after 30 years of extraordinary synth, electro and urban pop, is still beaten with a stick marked Johnny Hallyday by otherwise sensible journalists. Songs that have taken Europe by storm, from the gloriously bleak Belgian disco of Stromae's Alors on Danse to Sexion d'Assaut's soulful Desole blare from cars everywhere between Lisbon and Lublin but run aground as soon as they hit Dover.

If the stairs allow such room for thought it’s because Trudy is taking them at the pace of the slowest loris.

I'll think of how the kids come alive walking around sandplains / reading tracks, looking for goannas, digging up witchetty grubs / collecting berries, branches of bush medicines.

He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.