May be there was a planetary configuration my Daily Horoscope neglected to tell me about, but last week, a strange and lovely thing happened. I got two letters.

One arrived in the post, borne by a postman in gloves, missing only the silver salver. Being from an estranged friend, it created some dread. Would it be apologies, recriminations or worse, a pretence of nothing wrong, breezy intimacies eliding the rift? But, quite simply, he wrote how he often remembered our conversations and shared times and updated me a little about his life. He did not know why he was using the post. "Just" he guessed.