My mother-in-law kept showing up with her whole family for free BBQ at our house — when they came empty-handed again on the 4th, I served them a lesson instead.

And the sentence on the back of the menu — eleven words, small type, no number — did the other half.

That one wasn’t kind. I know exactly what it was and I would do it again tomorrow.

My father drove a lorry for thirty-four years and paid off a house in Merrow and died in a lay-by outside Corran at sixty-one, and every plate in that marquee was on a table that his money bought.

And twenty-one people ate off it and one of them asked who he was.

Somebody had to say his name out loud eventually.