I spent an evening with a friend who’s been struggling. She was depressed and very lucid.

I think I really like depressed people. Not so depressed that they just lie there pretending to be dead and wishing that pretending would make it so - those ones I just want to kick. But depressed enough that we can have interesting conversations about bad things without having to invent a happy ending for everything. Depressed enough that we can comfort one another without feeling patronising or patronised.

I have always been suspicious of it. Mostly I can’t understand it, and when I can I fear it’s trite.

When I was about fourteen my Granny copied Robert Burns’ To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough into a card and sent it to me in Nigeria. I was puzzled but stuck the card up on my closet door. I read it through from time to time but reprimanded myself if I felt touched by any of the sentiments.

Well, it’s been bubbling over in my mind these past few days. Compassion and philosophy and the romantic vision of the ploughboy as alcoholic poet. Language from 222 years ago and a different continent still intelligible, as is the guessing and fearing of the human condition. The nationalism and romanticism of choosing expression in a regional dialect, and the cutesy quaintness it reads with today. But mostly that desolated mouse.

I find myself wishing I had memorised more poetry, that my mind were better stocked with a wider selection. But I’m afraid it would all come back to the mouse.