And evidently it was a well-known fact that a single vicar, in possession of a modest fortune, must be in need of a wife.

Tips for Southern Visitors, No. 5 People will be quite kind to you when they realise you are from the South, because you can’t help it.

In some parts of North-east England, a man would rather kill himself overtaking on a blind bend at seventy miles an hour than drive a hundred yards behind a woman.

He let me go so suddenly I staggered. ‘So you settled for respectable dullness, Angel, while I settled for—’‘Disreputable excitement!’ I finished for him, rather tartly. ‘And I don’t know why you think my life is dull – especially since we moved here.’ (That was true at least!) ‘Anyway, I’d rather have dullness than be a hanger-on on the fringes of the sort of life you lead.’‘You know nothing about the sort of life I lead.

Tish, help me! I’ve cut my wrist on the damned glass – it’s pouring blood – probably an artery! Let me in before I bleed to death!’‘Go and bleed over the rose bushes, they’re supposed to thrive on it,’ I suggested heartlessly. He was by now directly underneath me and I couldn’t see any sign of draining arteries.‘You heartless bitch!’ he raged, which was more like the James I’d come to know and didn’t love.

Who needs men when they can have chocolate?Who needs sex when they can have chocolate, come to that

I’m terribly sorry, Fergal.”“What for? Marrying him? I should think you would be, Angel.

You have to watch them all the time,’ she assured me darkly. ‘Even if the spirit’s willing, the flesh is weak!