The nearer people approach old age the closer they return to a semblance of childhood until the time comes for them to depart this life again like children neither tired of living nor aware of death.
One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.
