I try to keep away from people writing about dying. It’s one of those healthy natural defence mechanisms – like cruelty – that work best when you’re young and vigorous. But like bone and tooth enamel, it weakens over time. And I am weak.

So when I saw the notice about the death of Dina Rabinovitch, whose columns I had read, and whose book is on the reading list for one of our new programmes, I had to look. That was her blog. It will cost you tears.

When I was a kid it was sex we were curious about, not death. I used to walk merrily to school every day past a memento mori:

All ye who do this way pass by
Remember Death, for you must die;
As you are now, so once was I,
And as I am, so must you be.

Rabinovitch’s writing reminded me of a few lines from Ted Hughes, quoted in a review, about how we are all still kids inside:

At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person’s childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim.

And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them.

The only real thing. Stay real.