Exit through the gift shop. Pick up a postcard, a magnet, a novelty eggcup in the shape of Queen Elizabeth I. Treat yourself to a replica Rosetta Stone, a Babylonian bookend, a build-your-own Leonardo trebuchet. Tuck your little one up at night with a cuddly Anubis the dog. Nicholas Coleridge, chairman of the Victoria & Albert Museum, has put the tat among the pigeons by telling the Cheltenham Literature Festival that the V&A shop is more successful than the BM’s.

Next week my compatriots will cast their votes in what has arguably been the worst Canadian election ever. By ‘worst’ I don’t mean allegations of voter fraud or political corruption or scenes of civil unrest but a collective release of hot prairie wind followed by a vague sinking sensation — the feeling of a prosperous nation of decent people settling into a new low of political disillusionment. The campaign kicked off with a bang, as Time, a US magazine, humiliated the Canadian press by breaking the story of the year: yearbook images of our dreamboat PM — the thinking non-gender-binary person’s gluten--free crumpet — cavorting in blackface back when he was teacher at a private Vancouver high school.

When I was young, from about the age of nine to 13, I went through what my parents recall with a shudder as ‘the football shirt phase’. Where some children rebel by smoking, and others take to eyeliner, my vice was polyester. My first shirt was a quirky one — an early Noughties AS Bari white and red home shirt with an itchy collar. The thing smelled of washing powder no matter how much I wore it — which was daily for the best part of three months one very hot Italian summer.