Somewhere within this idea of things there lurks the soul of a brick veneer, and being a poet in these late capitalist times is like using an hour glass rather than a digital watch ... Look at all these things in this overstuffed city. And out on the perimeters, Neighbourhood Watch saves another VCR!

This dumb belief in immortality. On this side, everyone lives as if there is time to become someone else. Everyone desires a small couvade. And then, at funerals, they all simply act as if someone forgot to turn up.

Couvade? I go to the Concise Oxford, where I find a quaintly phrased word: ‘Primitive people’s custom by which husband feigns illness and is put to bed when his wife lies in.’ Putting aside the assumptions hanging off the word ‘primitive’ here, I pursue ‘lies in’ because (this dumb belief in meaning) I want the dictionary to say what it means. With ‘lies in’ that prim pair, Fowler and Fowler, Oxford’s editors, come closer to the point by mentioning childbirth and lying-in hospitals. Ah yes, lying-in hospitals.