Every trip to the local library, I’d end up pulling it off the shelf, marvelling at the costumes and dreaming of the day I’d be tall and beautiful enough to dress like an elegant palm tree (below).

The pandemic heart is one thirsty for the crafty, the whimsical, and, in the face of a toxic mix of monotony and upheaval, the twistedly comical, the bizarre, the camp; anything that sits somewhere between light relief and mania. I’m sure they would have played some Oasis songs, but I was in the land of nod well before the end of the show.I’d forgotten that Manchester is a Nuclear Free City until we came across this sculpture featuring some very dirty doves. Disney’s Cinderella is sadly quite tastefully attired, so I had to keep my wildest flights of fancy in check). After a coffee, we walked into Didsbury and bought a loaf of bread at the newly opened branch of Gail’s the bakery.

In the dark depths of lockdown, Jane Asher’s Fancy Dress (1983), a handy guide to making costumes devised by the actress and author with the help of various celebrity friends, found a new life online.

Liesel might have a point, but some of those are probably other people’s pictures, saved from WhatsApp and … yeah, alright, I take too many pictures. I did suggest to Liesel that I carry a large building brick to act as a deterrent, but she vetoed the idea. There are some costumes that can be made in a hurry but you would need to have quite a lot of materials around the house to put them together. In the end, William picked up the longest item, something off a car, while Martha picked up the largest single item, a hub cap, again, off a car. The reader will be inclined to laugh too, sometimes at the superb silliness that can be achieved with plastic and pins, sometimes at the sight of a group of fully grown men crouched low to the ground, disguised as a cast of mushroom-like crabs.

We haven’t had to pay a cheque into a bank for a long time, but Liesel’s had one gathering dust for a few months now. Personalized advertising may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have a right to opt out. We’ll see it through to the end of the third series, but after that, they don’t need to make any more episodes just for us, thank you! The plan was to go into Manchester by bus, but after waiting for over twenty minutes, we resorted to Plan B.

Liesel joined the walk the following day but I had other plans: I walked over to Didsbury for a massage.