Are you a practitioner?" I ask. "A wizard?" "Sorceress, my dear," she says. "Practitioner is how the gentlemen have styled themselves, as quacks now … - Ben Aaronovitch

I didn’t dare ask because we have an unspoken agreement—I don’t question what she does on my computer when I’m out and, in return, she doesn’t murder me in my sleep.

Now, I have - as Beverley says - views about architecture. But there's modern stuff I like. The Gherkin, the Lloyd's Building, even the Shard - despite the nagging feeling I get that Nazgûl should be roosting at the top. But the truth is that in the case of One Hyde Park my boy Sir Roger was definitely just putting in the hours for the pay check. It's not ugly as such...it's just not anything in particular.

According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process.