“I am not a number, though I have the mug…”

They sit on my study shelf, over the oldest of the books. They are the sole surviving mugs of former times and have been rescued twice from black bin bags full of stuff I really don’t need anymore. One is a ‘fault-tolerant’ two-handed mug from my Tandem Computers days, the other has a number six on the side…

If you’re lucky enough to have a dad who was alive in the 1960s or who collects memorabilia from that wonderful, if wacky, decade, sneak up behind him when he’s having his bedtime Horlicks and sneer in his good ear, “I am not a number…”

If he doesn’t spill the contents of his mug down his elegant and crushed velvet dressing down, you can be assured that: (a) he is already a trained spy and resistant to such puny attempts on his…