Since a teenager, I’ve delighted in my hairdresser’s company and skill. The first visit to his Salon etched itself onto the platform of memory: he scowled when I said I was studying, growling “I don’t care for students.” Oooh, I shall enjoy this, I thought. And for the next thirty years, I did; cherishing trips to the teeny street of treasures.

When I called for a Christmas cut and heard an automated voice give a new number, my heart lurched. Anything but saturnine, Ivan and I have grown old together and the prospect of losing this unfriendly friend seemed unbearable. It transpires he decided to close the Salon to ‘hot desk’ chez another of the Quarter’s numerous coiffeurs.

Why is this pertinent to emotional intelligence? I’m not sure it is. Perhaps it’s more a matter of a fresh year bringing with it the unalterable fact nothing stands still. Gazing across time and space as Cassini has enabled, the prospect of fresh horizons which ignite the possible, is thrilling.  Bon voyage, mon vieux.