Iwas 20, and in the recovery room of my local hospital, coming round from general anaesthetic after minor surgery. My mind was lost wherever our minds go in such conditions, steering itself gently back into its familiar harbour. But then, suddenly – or as suddenly as anything can be when you’re in that numbed nirvana – I became aware that someone in the next pallet along was addressing me. He was staring at me from his own fugue state, and slurring the words, ‘You’re that copper. You are. You’re that copper.’

Now, talk to any nurse, and they’ll tell you the very peculiar and often entertainingly uninhibited things that people come out with as they drool back into consciousness. (A medical friend of mine remembers telling a rather grand, Penelope Keith-as-Margo-Leadbetter style lady, ‘It’s

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