Mum’s recurring complaint is that dad never finishes anything. There’s a half-built brick barbecue at the end of the garden that in twenty years has never seen a hotplate, let alone a sausage or steak. It was the same too with the model train layout he built for me as a kid, which never sported truck nor track. But I didn’t realise till now that not finishing things could be a good thing, a helpful trick to keep your creativity on track.

We can only hope that the resurgence of the extreme right in America inspires an equally strong counterculture. In the era of Trump, only punk can save us now.

There are few noble professions left unspoiled by controversy. Take the all too common occurrence of pyromaniac firefighters, corrupt cops and sinful priests. But with librarians, it’s different. As Michelle Astrid Francis shows us, in her first essay for Rabbit Hole, your average librarian is not only guardian of the stacks, but also a gatekeeper to imaginary worlds beyond.

This week, thousands attended rallies around Australia to protest against Australia’s policy of offshore detention, and to call on the Government to allow 267 men, women and children, destined to be sent back to Nauru, to stay.

In the last days before his execution, Saddam Hussein put down some final thoughts for prosperity in the form of a poem. This wasn’t the first time he had committed an act of literature. Saddam was already a published novelist.