“It’s easy, imagine you’re walking through a meadow of long grass, enjoying the sunshine and the flowers and the birdsong and so on, and then you step on a rake that someone’s left there, prongs upwards, and it flips up and smacks you in the face. It bloody stings for a moment or two. Afterwards it aches for a bit and then the pain fades and you carry on walking.’ ‘Yes, I sort of see what you mean. But it’s always there, isn’t it?”